Naturally Born Ethics, Effective Ethics, Or How Cannibalism Can Be The Moral Solution… & How To Avoid That.

Where does morality come from? A conjunction between genetics and circumstances. That means that, if the circumstances go real wild, so will morality... which will probably return to the default position: genocide and cannibalism… This is what to fear, rather than nuclear winter… Nuclear winter which is unproven and unlikely… However human cruelty and even cannibalism are amply proven… And no doubt sometimes justified…

Morality as genetics and circumstances? This also means that, given some circumstances, there are specific moralities corresponding to it, and maybe perhaps just one.

When Muhammad produced the Quran, he ordered an end to the cruel habit of killing little girls… The Chinese Communist Party did the same, 13 centuries later, when it got to power: girl infanticide was common in many ancient societies. 

There was an obvious reason for killing little girls: they are not as useful in hard manual labor and war, and the little breeders cause population explosions. Muhammad turned those disadvantages into qualities by pointing out that it was the best time in 1,000 years to attack the civilizations to the north. Muhammad solved the population explosion he caused from outlawing infanticide by invading the Roman empire…his first invasion was unsuccessful but his father in law and then his commander Umar, who succeeded The Messenger were wildly successful… in one generation, the world’s most extensive empire, led by the Arabs of Muhammad and their numerous children, exploded demographically and militarily in the face of the world… literally propped by the Quran’s more advanced morality. 

The CCP solved the abundance of girl problem and the subsequent population explosion by imposing a one child policy. 

Animal species have a naturally born ethics… It’s called “ETHOLOGY”. In a funny bias, many experts say humans have no ethology, only ethics… The latter comes from “freedom” (Beauvoir/Sartre). Reality, though, is that, like other animals, humans have ethology, a natural ethics. Tribal ethics can be very far from it. And the general question is where is ethology coming from? Survival of the species!

Patrick Gilliland wrote in response:

I think every group has some sort of ethics that always change over time as they adapt to an ever changing environment, animal behavior does the same and is less static than people believe

PA: Correct. So basically, given an environment, there is a natural ethics deduced from it. 

For example on Pacific islands with the technology of a few centuries ago, lethal taboos and cannibalism were natural. Lethal taboos, such as not entering a preserved valley, or cannibalism when proteins are hard to come by make sense… Law enforcement is easier when being eaten alive is a possible punishment. 

Animals indeed change their moral system: they generally view it as sinful to attack human beings, because they have been told so by their elders… Indeed advanced animals have very effective ways of communicating with sign language… This awe that humans inspire makes them more feared than lions in Africa. Such an awe generally extends to bears all over. That puts a lie, by the way, to the credo of those who advocate against speciesism. 

Read Peter Singer in the Guardian, May 21, 2023 rolling out his ludicrous Nazi-like credo that humans are no better than other animals: “We should give equal consideration to the similar interests of all sentient beings. Defenders of speciesism argue that humans have a special rational nature that sets them apart from animals, but the problem is where that leaves infants and the profoundly disabled…”

Advanced animals are smarter than Peter Singer, they have a more advanced morality, whereas Singer is more like an urchin. A bear, a lion, a chimp or a baboon will not view a human child as food in the same way as they would view an herbivore’s child as food. All of these species view humans as overlords that one must fear (rigorous scientifc studies have shown this is true).

In Africa, as a ten year old child, I mock-fought with baboon troops, exchanging stones… baboons are bad at throwing stuff, because they are walkers on their four limbs, but they try… I could throw stones at twice the range they reached, from my superior shoulder articulations, and they got hit and mock-infuriated… but, bruised or not, they would persist, as it was no doubt good training and fun and games. Had I been a non human, I would have been grabbed in three seconds, torn apart and eaten alive. Huge baboon troops make short work of even a pride of lions: baboons are obsessed by raw flesh and eat preys alive. A lion pride flees when confronted to dozens of intrinsically infuriated powerful baboons. But all wild baboon troops share the cultural ethics that humans can be harassed, and stolen from, but should be respected. This is wild places, from Alaska to tropical jungles, are reasonably safe for humans who assert their humanity to the wild denizens. I have experimented this thousands of times (the wilds are my hobby).

Patrick Gilliland: “We either evolve into something unrecognizable or become obliterated by ourselves, or a natural catastrophe. I’m pretty sure that’s the way things work.”

Man-made catastrophes, especially genocides, have a long and honorable past, how progress marched along. In East Africa, more than a million years ago, there were at least 14 species of hominids. In Eurasia, in the last 100,000 years, there seems to have been at least 5 distinct species, three of whom interbred (Sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans). Our ancestors no doubt ate part of the competition.

All right, this is the way things have been: cannibalism can be a natural solution (there have been examples of cannibalism from modern society not just New Guinea. So have no illusion about the likes of Putin. Two of the highest Russian generals have just (March 2024) been indicted for war crimes by the ICC… for directing lethal missile strikes on civilian infrastructure. Putin has already been indicted for kidnapping children. 125 states are bound by treaty to arrest the Kremlin addicted criminals.

If cannibalism can be a natural solution, one should endeavor to not create situations in which cannibalism is the natural solution. Cannibalism is not that far fetched: if fossil fuels production went down by say 90%, or in case of full out world war… Large parts of Africa would go starving, and the old moralities may have to be fleshed back to life…

There is no doubt that the followers of the Kremlin believe that Putin’s mutilated history is all there is to know: they have their own morality, where it is correct to kill Ukrainians, who are identifies to Nazis….

And as far as becoming unrecognizable… transhumanism is as old as the genus Homo. Or at least that’s the thesis there: https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/…/genetics-from…/

Much more transhumanism soon, thanks god… the latter being our power of creation. After all we all got engineered RNA recently… worldwide… Thanks to the drastic scientific efforts spearheaded by Mr Trump’s vile and mercantile bribe to offer scientists and big pharma billions to invent RNA vaccines … Gnetic modifications are coming and will not be restricted to curing people from cancer.

Someone as yours truly lives in modus vivendi that Pascal would have thought unimaginable (and Pascal wrote it was impossible for a human being to stay quiet in a room). The Internet enables to travel much… without moving… For whom does the ethical bell tolls? Ethics of nuance says it all depends…

Patrice Ayme

Cannibalism, Vuanatu-New Hebrides, 1885-89. Painting by Frazer, an Australian who was a direct witness (and left a written description). Cannibalism was practiced all over Oceania until the 19th century. As modern intensification of food production was introduced, it became irrelevant.

Where Greenhouse Hypocrisy Comes From

Myths abound in how to deal with the Anthropogenic GreenHouse Gas Crisis (AGGC): electric cars, a bit of wind, carbon credits, mysterious “carbon capture”. One of the myths, indeed, baked into the United Nations’ IPCC models, is that we will remove billions of tons of CO2 from the air within decades. Problem: no established, economical, scalable method to do this exist, or is even plausible with existing technology. That could be done, as with many AGGC consequences only if we had massive amounts of free energy…

Massive free energy is plausible when thermonuclear fusion works very well: just freeze the CO2 out of the air, and geomorph it into rocks at suitable locations… but that won’t be for generations (or as soon as thermonuclear fusion or other nuclear provides with giant energy).

Reducing basalt into dust, or injecting CO2 deep in the right rocks is not presently economically viable, until that point (except in a few special places, like the very special island of Iceland, and on a small scale). Meanwhile gimmicks, such as proclaiming forests as carbon sinks, as California did for years, as an illusionist, literally went up in smoke during the last two summers, with fascinating orange skies and the world’s most polluted air on much of a continent.

What nobody says is that many leaders do not not view the worst case scenario as plausible, nor think that it would be terrible. Russia would love to warm up by ten degrees centigrades. That many Russian cities would be deep under water looks unimaginable, so is not imagined…. The fault there is from scientists, who are paid to optimistically renew the fossil fuel industry with hopelessly optimistic fake climate “models”. 

By the same token, a two meter sea level rise, which is now guaranteed, within a generation, will be an unimaginable disaster, so it’s not imagined. In general, nonlinear effects, where the land and oceans warm-up by themselves, from releasing latent heat stored in land and sea, CO2, CH4, and reducing albedo, are viewed as distant possibilities… whereas there is evidence they have already kicked in.

Overall, people get elected as “representatives” when big money and big power have selected them. And as 84% of the energy comes from fossil fuels, that’s where the power is. Our “representatives”, and our media, are as smart, good and diligent as the fossil fuel money who bought them.

French Windmill, as tall as Eiffel tower, being installed. For old broken bladeless rusty ones, check the coast of Brittany. They are ten times smaller, but the sea got and gutted them. Problem: enormous cost to dismantle. How does one deal with an old carbon fiber, 100 meter long, stronger than steel blade? Burn it? Just kiffing, I’m a great humorist.

Wind energy has a future, perhaps, but, even more than solar, it needs storage, or this is all only fossil fuels in disguise… And storage means hydrogen and derivatives (although gravity storage, tried in Switzerland and with dams, is an existing, albeit limited, method…)

The correct climate policy must involve financing massively fundamental research in nearly all domains pertaining to energy. Biden said he would, he didn’t. Part of the plot?

Patrice Ayme

Lesson From Evil Germany? Global Plutocracy Causes Evil Insanity

In Germany’s Lessons for China and America, Roger Cohen philosophizes that:

Better to love your country with a broken heart than love it blind

Well, good try. Germany is a country created in the second part of the Nineteenth Century, in Versailles, France. It’s not an old entity such as France and its vassal England, which were both parts of the Greco-Roman empire… And France was basically the Second Foundation of the “Renovated Empire”… Which included unifying Germany. However, Germany became a nation-state 14 centuries after France, and eight centuries after Britain…

Thus it’s not that simple to compare France, the core of the Renovated Empire, and a country which was created… to fight France (its own mother, in a way).

Our fascist masters, the arrogant, deranged so-called “Democratic Representatives” told us we can’t go the beach, because they said so, a virus in their heads told them. And what they say is the law (they have not read the Constitution of the Republic). Instead, we the free, should put them in prison for abusing their powers, and applying them in an anti-scientific way.

German history is actually a festering cave of decomposing wiggling monsters, many of them poisonous. Vigorous criticism has not handled them all as deserved yet. And it gets worse: both the First World war, and the Second World War went the disastrous way they did, because the USA, child of the bickering union of France and Britain, did not just refuse to help them in a timely manner (it helped, in an untimely manner, most self-serving, after others had done most of the suffering and dying)… It was way worse than that:US plutocracy actually actively helped the crazed militaristic, racist, German plutocracy to achieve its self-defeating rampages. Result; the “American Century”.

But back to that crazed German culture, mostly an anti-culture defined as an opposition to the Greco-Romans and their Franks (the latter having built Germany, and even the language, it’s completely masochist for Germans to be anti-Franks…)

Breaking the spirit which made Germany criminal, is of the essence. Military victory is not enough. Barbarity has to be vanquished in the hearts, souls, and cognitive systems. A whole series of German master-thinkers were despicable and dumb. Starting with the traitor Arminius (“Hermann”) who betrayed the Roman army in 9 CE… Yet celebrated in the Nineteenth Century… A traitor, adulated.

The Gallic opponent of Rome, Vercingetorix, however stupid and rebellious to his own family, was not launched by perpetrating a stabbing in the back. So it does something to the soul when one erects as an example to follow someone who betrayed his comrades… fatally. And the captured Roman troops were not made prisoner or enslaved, they were tortured to death: Auschwitz, anticipated… Martin Luther, one protestants out of many in the period from the eleventh to the seventeenth century, was not nice either: whereas five millions assassinated Cathars advocated purity and veganism, Luther advocated to torture Jews (below his house). Luther was following “Saint” Louis… But not fully. Although Louis IX of France said nothing would please him more than planting a knife in the belly of an atheist or a Jew… He couldn’t do it, because it was against the law. Luther omitted the prominence of the (secular) law. For Luther, his fanaticism was the law. 

Lesser minds may object that they don’t see the connection between plutocracy and Luther. Well, they don’t know history. Luther succeeded because many Germany princes found him very convenient to assuage their thirst for power. Plutocracy, evil power, loved Luther fanaticism. Add Catholic fanaticism and, a century later you get the monstrous “Thirty Year War”, which ravaged much of Europe.

Catholicism itself was invented to give the fascist Roman emperors the metaphysics they needed to terrorize everybody during what one now calls the “Dominate” (which collapse the empire in less than a century…)

EMPEROR CONSTANTINE CHRISTIAN TERRORIST 325 CE (Fall Of Rome Part X)

So Lutheranism, just as the crazed anti-Judaism of the Christian founders, are actually plutocratic effects, to further mental fascization, hatred and sadism (Luther’s despicable sadism is completely obvious, to whoever read enough of him).

Then, to build on Luther’s madness, Hitler, unelected, Germany had a whole slew of grandiose tribal fanatics, still all too much admired, to this day: Herder (who loved herds), Hegel, Wagner… While most Germans got indoctrinated in the military attack dog role (but not Nietzsche and Einstein, both good Europeans).

An important figure of the deplorable German intellectual landscape is the despicable Kant, a much admired philosopher, whom the Nazis, including Eichmann at Jerusalem, used as a defense to justify killing millions because they were following orders, the highest order of morality according to that Prussian military robot. Kant was so pro-slavery , he wrote about to West Indies leaders to not outlaw the institution…

Warning: Nazis, the Kaiser, enemies of the Roman republic, and Xi, were promoted by global plutocracy (= evil-power). 

***

Roger Cohen informs us with wisdom from up high: Stephen Heintz, the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, has written of a crisis “that stems from the growing obsolescence of three core operating systems that have shaped civilization for the past 350 years: capitalism, fueled by carbon since the dawn of the Industrial Age and increasingly driven by global financialization; the nation-state system, formalized by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648; and representative democracy, a system of self-rule based on Enlightenment ideals of freedom, fairness, justice and equality.”

Well, the representative of the plutocratic brothers forgets that “Enlightenment ideas” were the ideas from, and published by an oligarchy which had forgotten the meaning of the word “democracy”.  

Representative democracy is neither representative, nor democracy, or then what it represents is plutocracy, or, at best, oligarchy.

The problem is that “our practice of capitalism is both putting the planetary ecosystem at risk and generating vast economic inequality.” The nation-state is “inadequate for managing transnational challenges like global warming.” And “representative democracy is neither truly representative nor very democratic as citizens feel that self-rule has given way to rule by corporations, special interests and the wealthy.”

It’s not just an economic equality. It’s an inequality of power, and an inequality of public expression, and an inequality of legislative enactment, also a health care inequality, etc. 

The financialization is also completely out of control. Actually the global financial system seized up on March 16, 2020, in a way it had never done before. Suddenly all financial values were threatened to go down to… zero. That includes all retirement systems… Why it happened is the same old same old: self-interested idiots of finance, making huge amounts of money, the sort of people Obama and Biden and Clinton eat in the hands of, and Trump has learned to milk, had decreed that some situations would never, ever, occur. But of course, when all financiers believe something, they make the opposite unavoidable…

I am not making this up because I am a maniac. I am not a maniac, but we are managed and led by maniacs, and they are ignorant and stupid. Most of their expertise is to be like the moronic Bush or Obama, and read off a teleprompter, what their bosses wrote for them, posturing with consummate gravitas, and wisdom. To see the enormity of what we are overlorded by, please read:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-day-coronavirus-nearly-broke-the-financial-markets-11589982288

Cohen adds: The virus and accompanying economic collapse have only redoubled the urgency of these reflections. This is the Age of Undoing — of world order, of international law, of truth, of America’s word. It is a dangerous time, as Germany knows better than any nation. Autocracy feeds on fear, misery, resentment and lies. It did in the 1930s; it does now. Better to love your country with a broken heart than to love it blind.

Corruption means; what comes with the rupture. This is the age of rupture, the age of corruption. Look at any center of power, nowadays, and you will see corruption. Not just a little bit. Instead, astronomical amounts. And now the corrupt ones tell you: don’t go to the beach, don’t swim in the sea. You know what? I did both, in full lockdown, and so did my ten year old daughter. Teaching the young means teaching not to respect the orders of corrupt, malevolent, power crazy idiots. 

Because that’s the fundamental problem with so-called “representatives”. Free people don’t need to be led by the nose by “representatives”. Since they have so much power, the positions tend to attract those who are the most greedy, the basest, most grotesque… and malevolent. Direct democracy is not just a political solution, it’s a moral solution… So we don’t have to be ruled by evil (Pluto) power (kratia).

Patrice Ayme

Climate Change and International Transport

We need a hydrogen economy. However, on day one of his presidency, Obama ripped out all financing for hydrogen, including for hydrogen fuel cell research… It became clear later that the boy was advised by the frucking frackers: recently, thanks to Obama (not Trump!), the USA produced 30% more petroleum, 13.3 million barrels a day, than the country which produced the most aside from the USA (Saudi Arabia at its peak)

US fuel cells had enabled the US to go to the Moon (and provided fireworks for Apollo 13). I doubt Barry the Boy knew this (he is best at knowing very little besides how to feed people with what they want to hear).

Here professor Ian Miller, a chemist and physicist of renown, points out that shipping is an ecological disaster (one cruise ship in Marseilles, idling in port, pollutes as much as two million cars at speed limit). And the solution? Hydrogen (or Ammonia, roughly the same, but more civilized)…

Making “green” hydrogen is a must. Just use PV solar panels for energy (or even wind, which I like less). Storing it as ammonia is a no brainer for safe storage and transportation. Actually, last I checked there was such a giant project in North-West Australia to send “green” energy to Japan… Probably to calm the likes of yours truly about Japan’s much more real plan to replace its nuclear industry with Australian coal. So Japan and Australia get financed by states and countries which go clean… while they go fish whales and pollute North America, killing American frogs, smothering the planet… While pretending to go green by killing non-killing nuclear energy.

All boats could use sails, as supplementary power, either as rotors, or the turbosail invented by Cousteau and associates, or even computer controlled kites. Those have not been developed because of the subsidies and tax-free status given to shipping (although full scale prototypes have shown they work.. up to 25% reduction of energy). One can expect considerable reduction in energy demand (also achievable by reducing speeds).

[2018 Viking “Grace”, a 2800 passengers, 500 cars ferry between Finland and Sweden. the single rotor sail on top is supposed to diminish carbon emission by 900 tons a year; the ship is otherwise fueled by natural gas, CH4, which as close to hydrogen as it gets in a naturally occuring fuel… Thus less polluting…]

In any case, just like the fracking Obama, great fracker-in-chief, the Paris accord was self-satisfying hogwash (consider Japan, Germany and their coal reintroduction)… Paradoxically energy guzzling Texas led by rabid “Red” governor Perry (now Trump energy sec.), did way better in going green (lots of wind)… The problem with Paris is that countries are supposed to self-improve, at a pace of their own choosing. The virus is doing better to reduce CO2 production, quicker.

Maybe all we can hope for is to balance one catastrophe by another?

PA

ianmillerblog

You probably feel that in terms of pollution and transport, shipping is one of the good guys. Think again. According to theEconomist(March 11, 2017) the emissions of nitrogen and sulphur oxides from 15 of the world’s largest ships match those from all the cars on the planet. If the shipping industry were a country, it would rank as the sixth largest carbon dioxide emitter. Apparently 90%of trade is seaborne, and in 2018, 90,000 ships burn two billion barrels of the dirtiest fuel oil, and contribute 2 – 3% of the world’s total greenhouse emissions. And shipping is excluded from the Paris agreement on climate change. (Exactly how they wangled that is unclear.) The International Maritime Organization wants to cut emissions by 50% by 2050, but prior to COVID-19, economic growth led to predictions of a six-fold increase by then!

Part of the problem is the fuel: heavy bunker…

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Running Out Of Oxygen (III). Prof. Denning’s Answer

Scott Denning

Professor of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University

In reply to Patrice Ayme

Patrice Ayme,

Thank you for this thoughtful comment. I agree with almost all of what you’ve written, and you seem to agree with almost everything I wrote in the article.

First and foremost, I completely agree that burning forests is a terrible thing for many reasons. You are quite correct that CO2 produces carbonic acid in the oceans in addition to heating the climate. Also, as you write, without strong policy to eliminate CO2 emissions it is likely that carbon in permafrost will thaw and decompose over a period of some centuries.

For all of these reasons, it is urgent that we decarbonize the entire world economy as soon as possible. The nations of the world have agreed to limit warming to no more than 2 C above preindustrial temperatures, and have also indicated that they prefer a target of 1.5 C. Achieving this means driving CO2 emissions to near zero in the next 20 years.

Indeed forest clearing is a part of CO2 emissions, perhaps 10%, and the recent fires in thee Amazon are a fraction of that 10%. But let’s not forget the other 90% too!

Regardless of our 100% agreement on these facts, calculating the effect of fossil fuels and warming on atmospheric oxygen is a matter of arithmetic.

Every atom of carbon that is burned or decomposed consumes one molecule of oxygen. There are about 35 x 10¹⁸ molecules of oxygen in the world, but only about 1.7 x 10¹⁷ moles of organic carbon on land – yes, this estimate includes all of the carbon in permafrost.

If (God forbid!) all of the terrestrial organic matter on Earth were to burn – every plant, microbe, leaf, and grain of frozen muck – the loss of oxygen would be (1.7 x 10¹⁷⁾ / (35 x 10¹⁸⁾ = about 0.5%.

It would certainly be possible to measure the change from 100% of our current O2 to 99.5%. But of course there would be nobody to make such a measurement since everyone would already have been oxidized!

Regarding the oceans, carbonate chemistry has no effect on dissolved oxygen. Only the organic parts of marine organisms participate in the CO2 and oxygen dance of photosynthesis and respiration.

If all life on Earth were to perish, in some kind of planetary disaster the likes of which have never happened in all the long story of our blue gem, then indeed the remaining air would eventually become anoxic. This would happen over geologic time as the minerals themselves slowly oxidized.

I have dedicated my professional life to explaining the climate crisis, to researching the problem and possible solutions, and to writing and speaking about the urgency of a just transition to a carbon-free civilization. A fair reading of the article will show I am no sycophant of catastrophe.

But it’s simply not true that there is now or any time in the coming thousands of centuries any reason to expect atmospheric oxygen to become scarce.

Best regards, Scott Denning

***

Here is a picture of (melting) permafrost on Herschel island:

***

Dear Professor Denning:

Thank you for your kind and considerate answer. This is how communications about the fate of Earth’s biosphere should be done:frank and thorough. I thank you for your time. 

When I wrote my comment, I was actually aware of the alleged “official in 2019”, quantity of carbon in the permafrost which is the core of your logic…

Here is what the International Panel On Climate Change says on this, Sept 24, 2019:

 Arctic and boreal permafrost contain 1460–1600 Gt organic carbon, almost twice the carbon in the atmosphere (medium confidence). There is medium evidence with low agreement whether northern permafrost regions are currently releasing additional net methane and CO2 due to thaw. Permafrost thaw and glacier retreat have decreased the stability of high-mountain slopes (high confidence).

I am very skeptical of the permafrost carbon number. Moreover, there is more “carbon” which can rot away in regions which are cold now, although not frozen.

Well, I disagree strongly with professor Denning’s position, and I have a strong philosophical argument or two, going that way, and several half-baked scientific points too, which I can add to the mix and which boost my philosophical positions (all of this in coming essay(s)).  I do not believe professor Denning and his colleagues have any counters to all these points.

Yes, I believe we can run out of oxygen on the scale of at most a few centuries, the way things are going, and I can prove it. Sort of. Let’s say it’s definitively in the realm of possibilities.

First a reminder, six years old:

Earth Out Of Oxygen: GLOBAL HYPOXIA

I don’t think we know for sure how much carbon is in permafrost, by an order of magnitude.. Melting permafrost, Herschel island, Canada, 2013…

Patrice Ayme

How To Remove CO2 From the Atmosphere: Water Volcanic, Calcium & Magnesium Desertic Tropical Ranges. Contemplate Indonesia!

DID INDONESIA CAUSE THE LAST THREE MILLION YEARS OF GLACIATION? SOLVING THE CO2 CATASTROPHE BY ACTIVE, FEASIBLE REMOVAL:

In the last 500 million years, three-quarters of the time or so, the planet enjoyed a hot, Jurassic style climate. It was not the case during the evolution of the genus Homo, one characteristic of which is the ability to endure cold and even subpolar climate. Enormous glaciations then rolled in, one after the other. What happened? Well, the mystery has now been unveiled.

This is not just a curiosity. Indeed, said discovery provides us with a solution to the CO2 catastrophe: just water dry tropical volcanic ranges and similar areas with plenty of calcium and magnesium, and the CO2 will be removed, stabilizing the atmosphere. Watering those particular mineral areas provides with a believable mechanism to decrease CO2 when enormous amounts of cheap clean energy is available… in a generation or two. (This is the first plausible mechanism ever suggested to do so!)

***

Sacred mountain of Zoroastrianism, the major historical religion of civilization, Mount Damavand is the highest point in Iran higher than the Alps or even the Caucasus. It is an active volcano in full sight of gigantic Teheran. The gas and fumaroles on top was a problem when I circled the crater. This is the northern side, facing the Caspian sea, a lush area. Other sides are extremely dry, and I propose to water them. That of course would require gigantic, power-hungry engineering beyond the capability of present civilization.

Global climate change around 3–4 Million years ago influenced the evolution of hominids, via the aridification of Africa, and what happened next, the Pleistocene glaciation about 2.75 Myr ago… thereafter the Earth’s climate suffered rolling glaciations… while human species evolved ever faster.

Most explanations of these climatic events used to involve changes in circulation of the North Atlantic Ocean due to the closing of the Isthmus of Panama. The idea is that a strong current of warm water was going north from the Pacific, joining, and augmenting the Gulf Stream, thus preventing any ice to form in the Arctic. With no ice in the Arctic, the albedo of Earth was significantly lower, thus all these infrared, instead of being sent back to space by reflecting snows, were trapped in the Arctic. A warm Arctic brought temperatures up, overall.

However, the closure of the Indonesian seaway 3–4 Myr ago could also be responsible for these climate changes: it acts similarly to the contemporaneous Panama closing (but as we will see, Indonesia does more than Panama). Closing the Indonesian seaway brought the aridification of Eastern Africa. The simplest theory and results from ocean circulation modelling show that the displacement of mighty New Guinea, about 5 Myr ago, at 100 kilometers per million years, going north, and west, closed the seaway. (But not just that, as we will see.)

That would have switched the source of flow through Indonesia—from warm South Pacific to relatively cold North Pacific waters (all waters below 100 meters are now blocked by narrow, shallow straights inside the Indonesian archipelago). This blockage would have decreased sea surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean, leading to reduced rainfall over Eastern Africa. Changes in the equatorial Western Pacific, by making heat stagnate there, probably reduced atmospheric heat transport from the tropics to higher latitudes, stimulating global cooling around the poles, and the eventual growth of ice sheets., which, in turn, cooled the planet further!

All of a sudden, shallow waters all over! The right side, the gigantic island of New Guinea, moved north, but also west, at 100 kilometers per million years, strangling the Indonesian seaway, starting 5 millions years ago (coincident with the same in Mesoamerica) This blocked the Earth’s warmest waters to enter the Indian ocean.

But there is another way in which Indonesia enters the climatic picture: CO2 removal by chemical reaction with basaltic rocks. This happened because the tectonic collisions caused the rise of high mountains, hence intense weathering.

***.

Basalt Make CO2 Into Rock:

Basalt generally has a composition of 45–55 % SiO2, 2–6 wt% total alkalis, 0.5–2.0% TiO2, 5–14 wt% FeO and 14% or more Al2O3. Contents of CaO are commonly near 10%, those of MgO commonly in the range 5 to 12%.

Limestone is a sedimentary rock which is often composed of the skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral, foraminifera and molluscs. Its major materials are the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate (CaCO3).

Immediate conclusion: if one adds CO2 to basalt, one should be able to make limestone. Indeed:

When CO2 is in presence of water, it reacts and makes carbonic acid. Putting lots of CO2 into water makes a Seltzer water which is acidic enough to destroy basalt. The low pH water (3.2) worked to dissolve the calcium and magnesium ions in the basalts, which then reacted with the carbon dioxide to make calcium and magnesium carbonates (which are whitish). Cores drilled into experimental sites in basalt showed rock with the tell-tale white carbonates occupying the pore spaces. Roughly it seems that 100 kilograms of basalt turned 50 kilograms of CO2 into rock. So far so good… One could locate power plants on top of basalt flows? Probably not: the process costs of the order of $17 a ton… That would augment the cost of burning oil by 20% (back of envelope computation in my head)… One has to understand the cheapest energy is already photovoltaic energy… In 2018…

Researchers tagged the CO2 they injected in basalt, 600 meters down, with carbon-14, a radioactive form of carbon. None of the injected CO2 was leaking back to the surface or finding its way out through a distant watercourse, as no radioactivity came out: the capture of CO2 by basalt is highly efficient.

***

Indonesia is sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere:

Many mountains in Indonesia and New Guinea consist of ancient volcanic rocks from belching volcanoes caused by subduction of various tectonic plates. When ocean floors were caught in a colossal tectonic collision between a chain of island volcanoes and a continent, those volcanic  rocks were thrust high. Lashed by warm tropical, acidic, corrosive, penetrating rains, these basaltic rocks react with CO2 sequestering the product inside the basalt. That is why, with only 2% of the world’s land area, Indonesia accounts for 10% of its long-term CO2 absorption. Its mountains could explain why massive ice sheets have persisted, waxing and waning, for several million years: evidence shows that the normal state of the planet in the last half a billion years, is a hothouse, with crocodiles all the way to the north of Greenland…

Researchers claim to have found that such tropical mountain-building collisions in wet areas coincide with nearly all of the half-dozen or so significant glacial periods in the past 500 million years. “These types of environments, through time, are what sets the global climate,” said Francis Macdonald, a geologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C. (December 2018). If Earth’s CO2 has a machine producing it, the rise of mountains like Indonesia’s could be it.

Long-term changes in the planet’s temperature are governed by shifts in CO2 atmospheric density. Plate tectonics refurbishes continually the planet’s surface. For decades, scientists have debated what turned the CO2 on, to the dramatic extent it did. Volcanoes were long prime suspects. Volcanoes erupt where plates dive beneath one another. By spewing carbon from Earth’s interior, they could turn up the thermostat. That was the idea. But it’s a bit stupid: CO2 was in atmosphere, gets captured by rocks, sediments, gets buried, and then belched out: it sounds like a rather quick (on a geological scale) zero sum game: what comes in comes right out…

Rock weathering of massive mountain ranges, seems a smarter approach: it depends on mountain building driven by plate tectonics. Indeed, sometimes there are giant mountain ranges, as big, or bigger than the present Himalayas. Sometimes, most often, not: as observed, the planet is a hot-house ¾ of the time, just as there are no massive wet tropical ranges, most of the time.

The Hercynian range, which spans the Appalachians, Scotland, and countless ranges in Europe, is still here for all to see (started 480 millions ago, it became Himalayan like when Africa collided with North America as part of the construction of Pangea).

When tropical mountains contain seafloor rocks rich in calcium and magnesium, they react with CO2 dissolved in rainwater to form limestone, which is eventually buried on the ocean floor. Both processes matter in removing CO2 from the atmosphere, This also explains why there were gigantic amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere in the Carboniferous era, and they mysteriously vanished: they are in all these rocks, such as all these limestone ranges….

Having the right rocks to drive the CO2-chewing reaction is not sufficient. Climate matters, as I said. For example, the Siberian Traps, a region that saw devastating volcanic eruptions 252 million years ago, are rich in such rocks but absorb little CO2: it’s too damn cold, the chemistry doesn’t happen much because of the cold (details aren’t clear yet).

More clearly, in Arabia, one finds plenty of heat and volcanic rocks, but the solvent, water, is absent: CO2 rains down as carbonic acid after reacting with water… But only then. So… If could make it rain in Arabia, we could eliminate massive amounts of CO2. @,lacks another ingredient. “It’s hotter than Hades but it doesn’t rain.” Indonesia’s location in the rainy tropics is just right. “That is probably what’s keeping us centered in an ice age,” Kent adds.

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The Preceding Suggests THE Viable, Sustainable and Definitive Remedy to the CO2 catastrophe:

Lots of cockmaniacal plans have been proposed to mitigate the CO2 catastrophe (Harvard, the Pluto university, is going to try to throw a veil on the atmosphere… although that won’t solve the CO2 problem, but trust the nasty to come up with nastier…)

Some of mitigation of CO2 will happen naturally: as, and if, the Siberian Traps become tropical, and if it rains there much, CO2 will be removed from the atmosphere. More generally, as the entire planet warms, it moistens up, and all volcanic zones of the planet become CO2 absorbing: this is a natural way to prevent CO2 from raising so much the planet boils.

Practically, if one finally masters thermonuclear power, and, or, photovoltaic energy becomes super cheap, one could make it rain artificially (or massively water) dry tropical volcanic rock areas (such as Arabia, Iran). Thus one would remove enormous quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere. That will have to be done by 2100, just to stabilize the climate in the standard hothouse, the Jurassic mode ( what Trump calls a “super climate”), with sea level ten meters higher and crocodiles in Newfoundland…

Over the past few years, academic Macdonald and his collaborators have searched for other times when tectonics and climate could have conspired to open an Indonesia-size CO2 sink. They found that glacial conditions 90 million and 50 million years ago lined up neatly with the collisions of a chain of island volcanoes in the now-vanished equatorial Neo-Tethys Ocean with the African and Asian continents. A similar collision some 460 million years ago started to form the Appalachians, but it was thought to have taken place in the subtropics, where a drier climate (from trade winds) does not favor weathering. By reanalyzing ancient magnetic fields in rocks formed in the collision, Macdonald’s team found the mountains actually rose deep in the tropics. And their uplift matched a 2-million-year-long glaciation. “They’re developing a pretty compelling story that this was a climate driver in Earth’s past,” says Lee Kump, a paleoclimatologist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.

Those cases are not exceptions. Indeed, the team compiled a database of every tectonic “suture”—the linear features left by tectonic collisions—known to contain ophiolites, characteristic pieces of sea floor, and pillow lavas and the like, volcanic sea floor, over the past half-billion years. Based on magnetism in each suture’s rocks and a model of continental drift, they mapped their ancient latitudes to see which formed in the warm and rainy tropics, and when. “We were surprised that this is not as complicated as we thought,” Macdonald said.

The team compared the results to records of past glaciations and found a strong correlation. They also looked for declines in volcanism, which might have cooled the climate (from lessening of CO2 emissions). But their influence was much weaker, Macdonald said.

A recent study challenges the mountain CO2 weathering-thermostat notion with evidence for the importance of volcanoes (as I said, it has to be rather a zero sum, when considering volcanoes from subduction, because what goes in comes pretty fast out!) The study used ages from thousands of zircons, durable crystals that can indicate volcanic activity, to show that upticks in volcanic emissions were the dominant force driving the planet’s warm periods. But there are two types of volcanisms: what I call “core volcanism” (“Traps”, Large Igneous Provinces, LIPs) brings in massive amounts of fresh CO2 from way down inside the mantle… It’s likely both streams of ideas have at least one hand on the truth.

The beauty of absorption by volcanic rocks of CO2 is that it explains not just why glaciations start, but also why they stop.

A hothouse Earth appears to be the planet’s default state, prevailing for three-fourths of the past 500 million years. We will have it again by 2100: the dice are thrown, it’s in the air.

An Indonesia-style collision may push the global climate into a glacial period, but only for a while. Mountains erode and continents drift. And the planet warms again.

Science doesn’t just bring understanding, it brings also the means to act on the universe. Now we have the trick to reduce CO2… (And I am, by the way, the first to propose it: massive watering of the desiccated zones!) To give us the means, we have to keep on deploying photovoltaic energy and thermonuclear reactors (I say “deploying”, because there is plenty of evidence that a massive thermonuclear reactor could work: the bigger, the more efficient, it’s a matter of mass against surface).

The alternative to the solution to the CO2 catastrophe by weathering and geological chemistry is a CO2 driven holocaust. Developing science and technology is not just profitable, pleasant, and human. It is also the moral thing to do. And the only moral solution to CO2 there is.

Patrice Ayme

***

***

P/S: By public request, a partial list of references supporting the research above:

References: Closing of the Indonesian seaway as a precursor to east African aridification around 3–4 million years ago
Mark A. Cane & Peter Molnar
Nature volume 411, pages 157–162 (10 May 2001)

Swanson-Hysell, N.L. and Macdonald, F.A., 2017. Tropical weathering of the Taconic orogeny as a driver for Ordovician cooling, Geology, G38985. 1.

(That was 440 million years ago, and the continents looked nothing like now; only Siberia is recognizable… It was a free floating continent…)

Tropical uplift may set Earth’s thermostat
Paul Voosen
Science 04 Jan 2019:

For scary, or when Antarctica partially melted under similar conditions to what we are going to get within a decade:

Antarctic ice melt 125,000 years ago offers warning
Paul Voosen
Science 21 Dec 2018:

 

Why This Site Shouldn’t Interest Most Americans

Very few Americans don’t believe in a God, or Life Force, Spirits and other Superstition (according to many polls, one of them reproduced below). I of course believe that all those who believe in superstition or divination are victims of a lack of introspection, resulting in a regrettable submission of (their) perception to domination. This the foundation of their political subjugation. It’s also the royal road to subjugation. Thus countries friendly to superstition and the religions attached to it, are typically submissive to mighty plutocracies.

And thus, as we see inequality rising around the world, it can be tracked to the imposition of the American “neoliberal” model, a modern ideology to impose the grossest traditional plutocracy!  Only 2% of North Americans do not believe in the supernatural: a god, life-force, spirits. This means that most North Americans are superstitious. In comparison, 11% of South-East Asians do not believe, in a god, life force, or spirit. One could say South-east Asia is five times less superstitious…. In France, a whopping one-third of the population don’t believe in a god, life force, or spirit. Thus the French are less ready to believe that plutocrats are benevolent, philanthropic spirits, under a merciful god… (The Market?)

The cult of all things religious has been reinforced top down in the USA since 1954, date of enthronement of “In God We Trust” (which displaced the Republican “E Pluribus Unum”).

For example, Americans are taught to venerate Pastor Martin Luther King. To esteem MLK is honorable, but his cult, at the exclusion of the cult of others, and not learning what exactly happened, arguably even more meritorious, is dubious. After all, President Eisenhower, an ex-general, and Earl Warren, head of the US Supreme Court, did the the heavy lift and courageous combat against segregation in the 1950s.  

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Forget God and its “Pastors”: Presidents, Generals and Judges are who Order Progress:

Here is Earl Warren:

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group…Any language in contrary to this finding is rejected. We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

—Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

Much clearer than “I have a dream!”. To desegregate schools, Eisenhower sent the army. Conclusion: if you want to fight injustice, clear legal, republican thinking and the army, in other words, force, is what is needed.

This Is Why The French Revolution, Core to the United Nations’ Charter, Happened in France, and Not America!

MLK was made into a living god, a sort of Muslim-like “Messenger”. In truth he was part, and rather at the end, of a much more powerful wave he surfed on. Heroes may be useful, but the cult of the providential man prepares that of the “philanthropist” as plutocrats call themselves. (Just as in the Middle Ages plutocrats modestly called themselves, the “best”.)

Thus, when I criticize Islam, many Americans feel I defend the Bible (which is actually the source of Islam, something i know, but they don’t…)

The entire left of the world, not just the USA, suffers from searching for heroes, rather than clear thinking on the Republic. But this is precisely what the plutocratically owned media and the masters of public opinion, wanted. It’s the result of meta teaching, inculcating impotent forms of thought.

I should speak only to the French agnostics (but they don’t generally read English well enough to understand me, as a French professional philosopher once told me, thus he asked me to translate my thoughts in… French; a full-time job I couldn’t possibly do. Actually, I have no time to write a book. As Socrates implicitly pointed out, thinking per se is a full-time job… Socrates, going overboard, famously called writing “the semblance of truth”; that would make all of math, physics and now biology the “semblance of truth”… Although I do agree for Plato…)

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Cult Of God, One & Only, Came From the Hydraulic Dictatorship Zone:

Verily, much of the roots civilization we use today appeared in what I call the Middle Earth (earliest writing is from there; although it was completely independently evolved in Mesoamerica). Egyptian civilization appeared 6,000 years ago, and the first city known in Anatolia, a few millennia before that.

However, the Middle East, central to the Middle Earth, suffered desiccation of the land, and then the minds, as it veered into . Thus it is natural that this physically sick region came up with a sick metaphysics. It is also of some import: it’s no coincidence that the Roman empire collapsed when Christianism was imposed to it, and countries such as Syria collapsed when Islamism was imposed to it (in the Seventh Century already!)

Some have noticed an analogy between “Ra” as in the theology of Egypt, AbRAhamism, and BRAhamism. This is not as ludicrous as it sounds. First, Abrahamism clearly arose in Egypt (as the Bible recognizes sneakily). Secondly Brahamanism, which gave rise to Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism itself came from the old Vedic religion, which, in turn, comes from the Middle East. Wikipedia says:

According to Anthony: “Many of the qualities of Indo-Iranian god of might/victory, Verethraghna, were transferred to the adopted god Indra, who became the central deity of the developing Old Indic culture. Indra was the subject of 250 hymns, a quarter of the Rig Veda. He was associated more than any other deity with Soma, a stimulant drug (perhaps derived from Ephedra) probably borrowed from the BMAC religion. His rise to prominence was a peculiar trait of the Old Indic speakers.[27]”

The oldest inscriptions in Old Indic, the language of the Rig Veda, are found not in northwestern India and Pakistan, but in northern Syria, the location of the Mitanni kingdom.[40] The Mitanni kings took Old Indic throne names, and Old Indic technical terms were used for horse-riding and chariot-driving.[40] The Old Indic term r’ta, meaning “cosmic order and truth”, the central concept of the Rig Veda, was also employed in the Mitanni kingdom.[40] Old Indic gods, including Indra, were also known in the Mitanni kingdom.[41][42][43]

The preceding illustrates well the concept of the Middle Earth. It also means that 72% of the world’s population derives its metaphysics from Egypt, or thereabout). More or less (the Egyptian empire often encroached deep on the so-called Fertile Crescent, which is anchored in the West by Israel, Lebanon, Syria…

Ultimately, Egypt, soon after a remarkable attempt at monotheism (which promptly spawned Abrahamism), decayed. Why? Some will point at the invasion of the “Peoples of the Sea”, which Egypt, alone among the Great Powers, was able to defeat (at considerable cost).

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Egypt’s Government Model Was So Obsolete, Its Civilization Became Senile:

However, shortly after, Egypt exhibited a lack of animal spirits and was durably overrun by Libyans, and then Assyrians, Persians…  Tellingly, it’s the very fierce Greeks and their uncouth students, the Macedonians, who freed Egypt.

What happened to Egypt? Long drawn out dictatorship, when the rise of new technology called for start-ups, basically Greece was full of startups. Startup city states…

True, Egypt got invaded by vast empires, modernized versions of itself. When the Persians came around and colonized Egypt, so they did because Achaemenid Persia was a multinational empire, ultramodern in many ways.

However, ultimately the tiny Athenian startup defeated Persia at Marathon, and then insolently landed an army to free Egypt (its mental benefactor) from Persia!

***

Puritanism Does Not The Best Minds Make, Deep Thinking Is Dirty:

Last week I went out with a number of friends of the Anglo-Saxon persuasion, aggravated by reactive vegetarian ethics. I was retrospectively surprised by the lack of animal spirits. How can one have artful, constructive mental intercourse without the blossoming of passion? It certainly can’t happen when all conversations are guarded. After all, that’s why the divinity was imposed: the divinity imposed a subdued mentality, a submissive morality, and, definitively, a lack of inquiry.  

Thus it’s no accident that the French, long at the forefront of the battle of ideas against the obscurity of stupor, are the ones most aware that all past superstition is just that, superstition without foundation, as reckoned by its own definition.

And these are not words without foundation: in the Twelfth century, Pierre Abelard reinvented Classical logic (and went further). In the Fourteenth century, another Parisian, Jean buridan (Johannes Buridanus), went even further with the Cretan Paradox (rendered famous by Kurt Godel). Buridan also invented the hard part of Newton’s laws (three century before Newton). Actually Buridan anticipated not just Newton, but also Riemann’s force theory (used by Einstein and Al. in the Theory of Gravitation aka “General Relativity”!)

Both Abelard and Buridan were involved in colossal struggles, fights to death, with the catholic Church. Buridan had refused to enter the faculty of theology, so that he would not have to take an oath to the god of Abraham. Abelard fought Saint Bernard to death. Saint Bernard was then the most important, and most fanatical Catholic. At the time, it looked as if Saint Bernard sort of won. But history showed he lost. Buridan’s work were outlawed by the church, under the penalty of death, except in far eastern Europe, where they were taught to the young Copernicus.  

During the period 1100 CE to 1700 CE, Christianism caused an unending succession of terror, major wars, crusades, holocausts and massacres throughout Europe, and from there, the world. How come Europe didn’t collapsed as Rome did? First Europe was governed mostly by a plutocracy which was severely related and intermarried. They killed the poor a lot, themselves, much less. And actually that plutocracy was firmly in command, in secular command.

For example a fanatical Catholic such as Saint Louis put his mother, Blanche de Castille, ex-ruling queen, in charge several times as he made war through the Middle East (and letting himself be made a prisoner by the one and only female ruler that Islam ever had, in Egypt!). So he let a woman in charge, but he also had organized a modern justice system, now copied everywhere, including the USA.

Rome collapsed, because emperor Theodosius, around 390 CE unleashed the office of “Inquisitor” he had just created, against the “Heretics” (“those who made a choice”). Inquisitor, heretics: two terms, dripping with blood and terror, bathing in fire, imposed by Roman Catholic emperor Theodosius. By 400 CE, the empire was collapsing so much that the bishops put the Franks in charge of three provinces.

The Franks were Pagans

Hopefully, they still are!

And will stay that way! Maybe Americans could join their forefathers the Franks, and realize that, if they want paradise, they can get it only on Earth. Let me rephrase this a bit: If one wants paradise, one has to work hard, because one can get it only on Earth! It means in particular that on eschews the seductions of the rule of hell (plutocracy), and better start with free universal healthcare, as those who believe it’s their task to create and make a really Good God!

Patrice Ayme’

Global Sea Ice Collapsing: Carbon Tax!

Any linear process, pushed too far, will become non-linear. This is true in psychology, as it is in imploding stars. (It is even true in Quantum Physics, where it used to be called “collapse” and now is called “decoherence”, because “collapse” did not sound too good, probably… Actually the switch from linear to nonlinear, is the greatest mystery of the Quantum; we will massage it below, with an ominous message, naturally…) And it is obviously true for the climate. Climate change can be slowly and steady (it took 35 million years to cool the dinosaurs into extinction, although the end of the process was nonlinear…) Climate change can also be extremely brutal, on the orders of years, not millions of years (contemplate the Younger Dryas, dramatic, extremely brutal glaciations which lasted no more than a millennium, the most spectacular being 18,000 years ago).

This is a complicated world. We are its gods, and we are warming up the party. Global sea ice is the sum of sea ice, worldwide, mostly found in the Arctic and Antarctica. It is suddenly collapsing. Yes, global ice fluctuates with the seasons. Yet, consider this graph:

 

Catastrophic Collapse Inevitable.

Just invert that graph, transforming the ice collapse into sea rise: this is what is going to happen. And not in 5000 years, as corrupt scientists have hopefully suggested. No: it could start to happen in 2017. And it will certainly start very soon, in the lifetime of existing politicians.

How did these scientists get corrupt? By hope and inertia: good jobs are given to those with good news, however fake those “news” may be. Especially if said good “news” reinforce the existing establishment. There was actually nothing new in claiming that Greenland and Antractica would stay covered with ice. It was actually old news.

There was no reason, whatsoever, to think that the giant ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica would stay stable under enormous warming. (Whereas global air warming is only 1.2 Centigrade above the baseline, warming in polar regions is several times this. This fact is explainable by logic alluded to below.)

However, there were excellent reasons, excellent because they were very simple, to believe they were not going to stay stable. I have found them, and exposed them on this site. Two reasons are most prominent.

One I could call that the permafrost argument: as temperatures shift up, by a few degrees Centigrade (= Celsius), the permafrost line has to travel hundreds of kilometers north, or south. As it does, ice sheets melt.

However, and this is the second major reason, ice sheets, which are up to four kilometers thick, exert a pressure of 4,000 tons per square meter (that means roughly 40,000 tons over the footprint of a car). The ice sheets thus press the continents down by thousands of meters, so warm water will slip below the ice, falling all the way underneath, and the disintegration will be brutal. (Such brutality has been caught on film.)

I am struggling with an essay which demonstrates why Obama wanted Trump elected (and how he accomplished this). Not easy to explain to those who cling to a simpler world (so the work is still in progress). Yet there is a first lesson therein:that our world has become so complicated, so poorly organized, and so dangerously managed, and our powers so great, that a single individual’s brain structure impacts significantly the biosphere.

A case in point is Kim of North Korea: a certified maniac who rules the world by instilling respect for his own insanity (he claims to be developing a nuclear “deterrent” by being able to throw nuclear bombs at any country, anywhere.)

So what’s up with the ice? Sea ice depends upon a cold sea. Ice on top of the sea, or land, throws back sunlight like a shield, back to space, before photons can dig in the ground, or the ocean, and deliver in the depths their momentum-energy, raising the agitation, thus temperature there. Once the ice cover is gone, photons can heat up the depths. Normal temperature measurements which make headlines are just about air temperature, a meter off the ground. They are not about the rise of temperatures of the depths.

If, at some point the rise of temperature of the depths becomes to great to allow ice or snow cover in winter, ground, or ocean temperature is exposed to photons, thus heat, even in the cool season, and a vicious circle, a different regime, starts.

The transition does not have to be smooth. In Quantum Physics, a system can “tunnel” between a local minima, and another, even lower (this is “classically” not allowed). So will object that climatology is a “classical” system. And they are obviously wrong: this is the famous paradox of the hurricane started by a butterfly’s wings. Ultimately, Quantum systems decide of everything: if zillions of Quantum systems switch to a lower energy state together, we have a “classical” transition.

Thus, the climate of the entire planet will LURCH to a different state. The collapse of global sea ice is an early indicator of the incoming catastrophe (reminiscent of when some temperature indicators went up inside the left wing of the Space Shuttle Columbia; by then, Columbia was doomed; in our case, we are not doomed terminally: we will be more or less doomed, depending upon how we react now).

This happened countless times in the past: the AMOC (or Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation), is the planet’s most significant current: it enables the Gulf Stream to go warm-up Europe gently. However, sometimes, it gets cold before making it to Iceland, and drops to the sea bottom, 6,000 meters down, short of the entire north-east corner of the Atlantic.

As it does in the fictional and exaggerated movie “The Day After Tomorrow”, when the AMOC brutally changes (this we know, for a fact explained mysterious flash freezes in the past, more than 10,000 years ago).

Actually my own position is more subtle: I do not expect a brutal glaciation in Europe, as when the AMOC lurched last, because there is plainly not enough easily liquefiable cold in the Arctic. However, I expect something way worse: brutal sea level rise, in the tens of meters. My reasoning is terrible in its brutal simplicity: warm oceanic water will slip underneath, and then fall thousands of meters below the ice sheets. Yes, below. For more details, please read:

West Antarctica Melting, Amazon Not Helping

Warm winds on top will not help, and have already disintegrated major ice shelves in days (like four days: by happenstance, measuring instruments caught the disintegration of a major ice shelf, ten years ago: it was immediately preceded by a four-day, 16 Celsius (62 F) wind storm (with hurricane winds). Said winds are of course augmenting. Because of thermodynamic effects, extremely warm winds can occur even in July, in the heart of Antarctica’s winter, bringing temperatures up by 40 Celsius (from minus 30 C to plus 10 C), vaporizing the snow cover (winds are augmenting all over the planet, as more energy is pumped into the biosphere).

The Obama administration did precious little about the developing climate catastrophe (his own administrator just testified in Congress that Obama administration policies had an impact of .01%; even the much derided governor Perry from Texas did much more, by transforming the One Star State into a large wind farm!)

Trump could do much more, by killing two birds with one stone. He could do what Obama and the establishment which used him as a puppet, did not dare do. Mostly because they are very serious, respectable people getting their power from even more serious, more respectable people.

Set-up a worldwide carbon tax. Europe will cooperate: several European countries already have carbon taxes, all tax gasoline and diesel at enormous rates. It happens that, under Obama, the US government was selling the best coal in the world, five times below cost (a Science Magazine lead article detailed this in December 2016; I planned to write an essay on it, but did not find the time-energy…). That dragged all coal prices down, worldwide, and was an anti-carbon tax.

By lifting that best-coal price in Federal lands, thanks to a carbon tax, Trump would bring coal prices up (thus momentarily helping the coal miners who voted for him).

Such is the way. There is no alternative (slogan of the stupid Thatcher!). Of course, there is so much inertia in the system, a rise of three degrees Centigrade is guaranteed, and coastal cities will have either to be evacuated, or sit behind ten stories tall levees…

Anyway, let climate skeptics munch on the graph on top. Brutal floods are a historical fact. Sumerian civilization was drowned in a sudden flood. And yes, it was man-made, we understand this now. 43 centuries ago, the most advanced civilization, or, more exactly, one of the roots of what would become the most advanced civilization (ours) was wiped out in a matter of days, by a man-made cataclysm.

Meditate that.

Meditation is the noblest pursuit of humanity. Or, at least, the one activity which characterizes humanity best.

Patrice Ayme’

 

Of Nukes, Dogs, North Korea, & Necessary Evil

KIM, THE HEREDITARY KING OF NORTH KOREA, MAKES A NEW NUCLEAR H BOMB EVERY SIX WEEKS. His engineers are trying to build reliable intercontinental missiles. The fear of a heat wave in Los Angeles will take a whole new meaning soon. (And what did the president do about this security problem? Less than Bill Clinton. Oops.)

Kim Jong Un killed entire “groups” of people in his own family, including his uncle, who was instrumental to get him to power: “the discovery and purge of the Jang group… made our party and revolutionary ranks purer…”[117 In 2015, the defence minister was executed by anti-aircraft fire, for “talking back”.

Certainly the uncle was arrested, humiliated, and executed. “Despicable human scum…worse than a dog” is how North Korean state media described the once-powerful uncle of leader Kim Jong-un. It was claimed that Jang Song Thaek admitted trying to “overthrow the state”.

Kim & Wife: Expensive Dior Purse. Feeding People To Dogs. Not Yet Personally On The Menu.

Speaking of dogs, four star general Jan Song Thaek, once thought to be the most powerful leader in North Korea, was stripped naked, with five colleagues, thrown into a cage, and eaten alive by a pack of ravenous dogs… according to a newspaper close to China’s Communist Party. The dogs had not eaten for five days, and the execution lasted an hour. In the end, the dogs cleaned the plate. (Others said that he was executed by machine gun.)

Whatever the rumors, higher-ups in North Korea, and their families, have been executed in large numbers. Differently from Stalin, Kim does not even bother with the appearances of fake trials. Yesterday’s horrors have become quaint.

Kim has gone to the furthest, darkest side. Supremely educated in Switzerland, the North Korean dictator knows all too well that any reason too removed from the law of the jungle, would be his demise. The North Korean leaders have long made Switzerland their central access point (say to the French Riviera and French medical treatments).

With North Korea, the world is confronted with the Hitler problem, not just an uneducated immigrant loser, of the most modest origin, but with someone who is immensely rich, a proven killer, close, personal, whimsical, well-educated and in command of weapons Hitler could not even dream of.

If Kim has the choice between being eaten alive by dogs and threatening, or starting, a nuclear war, he will, of course, chose the latter. Indeed, people who brought him up have explained he was definitively a brat, even as an eight year old (see the Washington Post report of May 27, 2016).

Unfortunately, the only reasonable prospect, then, is for democracies to prepare for what Kim is, namely, the worst: very clever, and very nasty. And that reasoning with him will not help. This is clearly a case where the strongest, darkest means are required.

We have to dial back to 1935, and ponder another crazed, demonic dictator, Hitler (who had just consolidated power with an accord with the German army making him Chancellor and President).

What should have been done with Hitler? What should the democracies have done? Now we know, with today’s mentality and morality: going all out against him.

(But the sordid truth is that it was in the best national interest of the USA to proceed with Nazism and the Second World War… just as it was to have Jefferson and Jackson massacre the Indians, steal their lands, and quintuple the area of the US… Agreed, the USA has changed: the collaboration of the US with Hitler could happen, and did happen, because of the mentality reigning then).

So let’s reconsider Hitler 1935 with today’s mentality: let’s do as if we wanted to avoid World War Two, the death of 5% of humanity, and serious fears, threats, hardships and problems for much of the rest.

Before I come to what to do, we have to remember that this time the stakes are much higher: Kim intents to use nuclear blackmail, with intercontinental missiles aimed at the largest cities of the West. Kim’s government said as much last year, he will do it again, and, this time, with power to back him up.

North Korea, right now is the Nazi Reich, in a potentially even worse version, but this time, we know the program ahead of its attempted implementation, through vast annihilation of uncountable multitudes. Insane? Sure. That’s the entire point, and that is why Obama could not handle it. Obama, fed on a steady diet of Financial Times and University of Chicago, believe people are rationally greedy. But of course, there is much more to humanity than that: the Will to Extermination, for example. The Will to Extermination is a gift: like playing tennis, it can be developed to a fine art, through enough practiced. Kim had plenty of practice (just as Hitler did).

So what to do? Forget the sanctions against North Korea as a plausible long-term solution: that would be about reason. Kim is not about reason (and he can leverage China, as his family long did). Get ready for war. Nuclear war. Or then target Kim and do away with him. There is a precedent for the latter.

In 1938, Hitler’s generals approached British and American diplomats and authorities, asking their governments to declare that they would stand with France in irremediable opposition to Nazi Germany. Then, they explained they would make a coup against the Nazis, arguing that Germany was in danger. Something similar done against Kim is what should be done now.

In 1938, the British and American governments not only did not do what the German generals had asked them to do, but they warned Hitler of the plot against him. (However, Germany had been a democracy just prior, and, even under the Kaiser, was a softer sort of fascism).

Let’s learn from history; let’s not repeat history. Time for a dark and dirty vaccination. To prevent incomparably worse.

The nuclear poker of Truman on August 6, 1945, worked: Japan capitulated within 6 days. The nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were moral sacrifices. However, what Kim prepares for us all, until he dies, is worldwide nuclear blackmail. Kim is only 33. And North Korean geology is very wealthy. Is that how we can live? (Kim already threatened to nuke Los Angeles and New York).)

Kim’s threats with nukes call for the darkest side… to remedy the situation. Morality comes from sustainability (that’s shown both by etymology and logic). Is a world where a few rendered insane by cruelty, fear and rage are armed with nuclear weapons sustainable? No.

Obama, and countless pacifists in the last 71 years have said they wanted to get rid of weapons of mass destruction. However, we need first to get rid of those who want to mass destroy, and that means destroying the mentalities conducive to this sort of concentration of power.

Meanwhile, the only sane, let alone moral, thing to do is to acquire military technological superiority.  Eight years ago, Obama said that Pakistani nukes were his number one worry. Rogue Pakistani Muslim supremacy and greed supreme scientists helped North Korean nukes. As president, Obama undermined the safety of the world, because he actually helped the North Korean dictatorship, and is still actively doing so.

How? By demolishing the US high-tech innovation system by fostering tech private tech monopolies. The latest example is his latest change in the laws directing the US Patent and Trademark Office. New laws guarantee that people and corporations who gave Obama big money will be favored. So what will suffer? Real innovation. And what will make democracy sustainable? Real innovation.

Hitler happened in a worldwide mental ecological system. So does Kim, and Islamism, and global plutocracy, of course. These are all examples of the rule of demonicity (plutocracy).

Ultimately, anything which favors plutocracy here,  favors plutocracy there. Such as all the colossal, blatant advantages given to those who financed Clintons, Obama and Bushes (from the Koch brothers, to the Spy Network booking your face). The North Korean dictatorship, Putin, the Islamists, and all the powerful rotten ones around the planet feel this, know this, see this, and play it like a violin.

Those “leaders” grabbing all the levers of power are not demented, they are not crazy, they are not sick, they are opportunists. And the opportunity of power, not to say power itself, has transformed them, neurohormonally, and perhaps even epigenetically (we know this happens in fishes, so why not in humans: are we not more sophisticated than fishes?) What they call reason, sustainability calls insanity: a nuclear strike on Los Angeles, successful or attempted, would make North Korea into a radioactive desert. The “leaders”, all over, have more power than ever, are more corrupt, therefore, than ever, and have become, more than ever, monsters made to rule, by all and any ways they can access.

It is for a new moral code invented by We The People to bar this sort of access to evil. “Equality” in “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, is not just a matter of the pursuit of happiness, but of the pursuit of survival. Of humanity as a species.

Patrice Ayme

Record Heat: Non Linear World

World Global Monthly Temperature Is Blowing Up (NASA data, March 2016)

Temperatures Blowing Up, As Expected: THE SINGULARITY HAS ARRIVED

(Doomed) Presidential Candidate Sanders insists, correctly, that the USA needs a revolution. So does the world. Plutocracy, its “money changers” (president Roosevelt), carbonizers and political servants have taken over not just the honor of the human spirit and civilization, but also the biosphere itself. Meanwhile the planet is reacting:

Some smart donkeys will point out that this is the year of the strongest El Nino ever. The much smarter ones will retort that, when the planetary warming is fast and furious, El Nino will arrive every year. That’s not a joke, it’s paleontology of the climate.

People such as the present author have long pointed out that nonlinear effects could come in gear any day, launched by the anthropic poisoning of the atmosphere by man-made greenhouse gases. It is basically what happens in a criminal forest fire: somebody comes with a match. Given dry weather, high temperatures, and a wind, a vast conflagration results. As I said the three great Antarctic Glacial Basins could disappear in decades, not millennia. And soon.

This general mess is part of the famed “singularity”. It is fundamentally caused by the nonlinear rise of scientifically driven uncontrolled industry.

What Matters Most Is What Is Happening At the Poles, Where the Heating Is Maximal

At some point this Winter temperatures went above freezing… at the north pole itself. The ice pack is accordingly at the lowest extent, ever. Proverbially, frogs are supposed not to jump, if one rises the temperature slowly. Meanwhile, the porous limestone on which Florida lies will not allow to save Miami with the simple expedient of building dams.

When Obama became president, he fixed the… Bush presidency. An admirer of Reagan, Obama lowered the taxes on the richest, by 20%, because followers of Reagan believe in “trickle down economics”. Then Obama gave a trillion to the banks (“TARP”), which reimbursed the Treasury, as the lying Clinton disingenuously, but correctly points out… Tanks to many trillion of dollars given to banks by the Federal Reserve (another branch of the government).

While Obama was busy saving the class he had been told he joined (and here is your Nobel Prize, boy!), he let the planet burn.

The Obama’s doctrine fundamental principle is: “Don’t do stupid shit!” However, when facing a singularity with a mind of its own, there is no difference between “doing stupid shit” and not doing anything.  Because the most stupid thing we can do is, nothing at all. Even Trump supporters have understood this. Obama thought that, by doubling up on Reagan policies, he would improve matters. Now he has to face these graphs. Like the butchery in Syria, they are his babies. There were holocaust before, a few hundred thousands Syrian dead, is nothing special, in the land of the “religion of eternal peace”, agreed.

However, the cooking of the biosphere will long live as the greatest infamy, ever. And those who wanted power so bad, and chose the worst as advisers, will be forever accused by history. Where is your suggestion to put a carbon tax, Mister President? Too busy asking your plutocrats for money? Cooking the biosphere is Obama’s gift, the change we can believe, because that’s the one we can see.

Patrice Ayme’