Stories I Am Watching
THE NEXT METHANE EXTINCTION
As worldwide carbon fuel emissions surged past 900 tons each second, scientists onboard a research ship sailing the entire length of Russia's northern coast have discovered the sea foaming with an atmospheric-warming gas 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
While U.S. politicians natter on about resuscitating a virtual digital economy, a global emergency is underway as some 2,000 billion tons of very real frozen methane thaws on the rapidly warming Arctic seafloor.
Unless world governments act now to halt carbon emissions and reverse the rate of warming, we face a repeat of a Great Extinction Event that occurred some 251 million years ago, when another series of gigantic methane burps came close to wiping out all life on a space colony we call Earth. It took 25 million years for even rudimentary coral reefs to re-establish themselves - and more than 100 million years for many ecologies to regain their former diversity.
NEW GEOPOLITICS OF ENERGY
“At a time when world supplies of oil, natural gas, uranium and key industrial minerals like copper and cobalt are beginning to shrink and the demand for them is exploding, the major industrial powers are becoming more desperate in their drive to gain control over what remains of the planet's untapped reserves…
"It is essential that America reverse the militarization of its dependence on imported energy and ease geopolitical competition with China and Russia over control of foreign resources. Because this would require greater investment in energy alternatives, it would also lead to an improved energy economy at home (with lower prices in the long run) and a better chance at overcoming global warming” - leading to abrupt climate shift through massive methane release from melting permafrost and ocean floor clathrates.
“As we approach the 2008 elections, two paths lie before us.
"One leads to greater reliance on imported fuels, increased militarization of our foreign fuel dependency and prolonged struggle with other powers for control over the world's remaining supplies of fossil fuels. The other leads toward diminished reliance on petroleum as a main source of our fuel, the rapid development of energy alternatives, a reduced US military profile abroad and cooperation with China in the development of innovative energy options. Rarely has a policy choice been as stark or as momentous for the future of our country,” says Michael Klare, defense correspondent of The Nation, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, author: Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy
RECUMBENT BIKE ELECTRIC CONVERSION
Hi Wayne,
Good to hear from you. I will be putting full details on my BikeE conversion on my website in the
near future. Until then... I am using a 36-volt Crystallite hub motor. Do NOT use a 24-volt system. It is not powerful enough for hills or hot weather. Also use a heavy duty controller to handle high loads, steep hills and summer heat.
My BikeE needs range to get across hilly terrain on two islands and on into town, so I installed a 13 amp-hour NiMH battery. I get up to 40 kilometers, peddling without hard exertion. For local trips, 8 amps is fine. (I prefer Lithium Ion but cheaper Chinese versions are and not reliable right now.) All components were purchased in Canada from the UBC Bike Club. Also strongly recommended: an "armored" mountain biking or motorcycle jacket.
GOOGLE 833,000 pages: “electric bicycle”
THE U.S. MILITARY'S WAR ON THE ATMOSPHERE
In order to secure the vital oil route through the Strait of Hormuz, in February 2007 the carrier USS Stennis joined the carriers USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, USS Nimitz, Kitty Hawk and Constellation - each carrying 70 to 90 fuel-guzzling warplanes - as well as the helicopter assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard and dozens of cruisers, destroyers and submarines in the Persian Gulf.
Depending on how it gets delivered, military fuel averages around $300 a gallon.
Ashore in Iraq, each 1,838 M-1 Abrams tank gets .2 miles per gallon of jet fuel - just firing up the tank's turbine requires 10 gallons of fuel.
Each carrier converts 5,600 gallons of bunker fuel into 123,200 pounds of carbon and belches it into the atmosphere - every hour. Make that 369,600 tons of carbon per hour for six carriers underway - plus their escort ships. On the 14 day passage to the Persian Gulf, each carrier and its air wings converted two million gallons of fuel into 44 million pounds of carbon.
Kerosene - jet fuel - puts considerably more carbon per gallon into the atmosphere than gasoline or diesel. Each of the Army's Apache attack helicopters gets about one-half mile to the gallon; a pair of Apache battalions in a single night's raid will consume about 60,000 gallons of jet fuel.
Any of the large helicopters - the Sea Stallion, Super Stallion, Sea Dragon, or Pave Low III - sucks up five gallons every mile.
This carbon output connects directly to the methane emergency described above...
The gas hog award goes to the B-52 Stratocruiser, which has eight jet engines, and zips through an roughly 3,334 gallons per hour. In one hour of flight - 600 miles - the B-52 uses as much fuel as the average driver uses in seven years.
Even though the B-52H holds an enormous 47,975 gallons of fuel, it requires mid-air refueling. The KC-10 burns 2,050 gallons per hour. The larger KC-135 Stratotanker sucks up 2,650 gallons per hour. The amount of fuel that the KC-135 carries would keep the average family car running for 63 years - a lifetime of driving.
Forty-two F-117s each flew over 1,300 combat sorties. Using an average of five hours per sortie, at 619 miles per hour, time in the air for just this one type of plane comes to 190,827,000 miles, resulting in an astonishing 26 million tons of carbon. It would take a fully loaded Boeing 747-100, flying from Los Angeles to New York, 328,165 trips to produce that same amount of pollution. On average, 40 flights leave from LAX for JFK daily, so those 328,165 trips, in commercial terms, would take 8,204 days, or almost 23 years.
In 2006, the Air Force consumed 2.6 billion gallons of jet fuel, the same amount of fuel consumed from December 1941 to August 1945, during World War II.
The military, by its own admission, produced 28 billion tons of carbon in 2006 - already higher than what the government projects for the entire nation in 2020. Add in Afghanistan and the Navy's bunker fuel and those 28 billion tons of annual military fuel burn are actually 40 or 50 billion tons. Multiply by an average 22 pounds of carbon for each gallon - and factor in Chinese, Russian and other military fuel burns - and you begin to see why the military's war on the environment endangers us all.
ROBOT KILLERS
Last year's “successful” test of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle - or drone - that sought out and destroyed a target without human intervention marks a dangerous step closer to autonomous weaponry. As the US military now states, Hunter Killer UAVs equipped with sensors and weapons “are becoming the basis for a new concept of 'Air Domination' of urban areas.” What other self-directed weapons are in development - and where is this taking us?
[defense-update.com]
ATLANTIS FOUND AGAIN
Roughly 2,600 years ago, the best keepers of ancient history, the Egyptians, told the Greek statesman Solon that an island where civilization began was submerged around 9,600 BC after existing for thousands of years before the great flood. Plato's Critias cites many physical dimensions and detailed descriptions, including the great plain below its southern foothills, concentric harbor rings, and the sacred Acropolis Hill.
After ten years of research and the creation of underwater 3D models, Robert Sarmast says that more than 50 physical matches with Plato's legend show that the Island of Cyprus is actually the peak of a drowned Atlantis, one mile below.
"Everything matches the descriptions in the dialogues of Atlantis to an uncanny degree," said Sarmast. “All we really have to do is to film a cut-stone block or a megalithic structure that's laid out in some geometrical shape of a building on the sea floor.”
He hasn't done it yet.
The alleged discovery has been greeted with barely concealed mirth by the Mediterranean island's tourism office.
"The possibility of Cyprus being Atlantis is next to zero," said Plato scholar Sofronis Sofroniou. "Cyprus is mentioned by Homer and other people and there is no mention of that. "If Cyprus was Atlantis, it would probably have been mentioned. There is absolutely no basis for this theory."
Sophocles Hadjisavvas, director of the Antiquities Department, agrees. "This is mere speculation and has nothing to do with reality," he said. "But it is good for Cyprus tourism," he added.
John Knowles says it was very likely Sarmast would in fact uncover an ancient city because the Mediterranean is littered with them, but that this did not mean it was Atlantis.
HEARTMATH SYNTHESIS
The heart is not just a simple pump, but a highly complex, self-organized information processing center with its own functional "brain." With each beat, the heart continuously communicates with the brain and body.
“We can think with our hearts,” says Joseph Clinton Pearce, author of The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, Exploring the Crack in the Cosmic Egg, Magical Child, Magical Child Matures, Bond of Power and Evolution's End
The heart's nervous system contains around 40,000 neurons. The heart release norepinephrine and dopamine neurotransmitters once thought to be produced only by neurons in the brain.
The Institute of HeartMath is following up on discoveries in neuroscience and microbiology showing that the heart is in a constant two-way dialogue with the brain. The heart cells are the first cells to form in the embryo, so the body grows and is organized in the heart field. The actual number of neural connections going from the emotional centers to the cognitive centers is greater than the number going the other way.
As we experience feelings like anger, frustration, anxiety and insecurity, our heart rhythm patterns become more erratic. These erratic patterns are sent to the emotional centers in the brain, which it recognizes as negative or stressful feelings. Stress hormone levels increase, blood vessels constrict, blood pressure rises, and the immune system is weakened. If we consistently experience these emotions, it can put a strain on the heart and other organs, and eventually lead to serious health problems.
Erratic heart rhythms also block our ability to think clearly. Feelings of anxiety drive up the level of mental noise to such a pitch that it overloads the circuits the brain needs for paying attention, learning, focusing, and remembering.
On the other hand, uplifting feelings such as appreciation lead to increased harmony and synchronization in the brain and nervous system, which facilitate our ability to think clearly. When we experience heart-felt emotions like love, care, appreciation and compassion, the heart produces a smooth pattern. Listening to facilitative music enhances mood and boosts immunity.
The heart has a much larger EMF than the brain. The body's EMF requires ions in the air through which to flow. The higher the ion count the higher the flow in the EMF. The higher the EMF flow, the higher the energy generation of the cells and the higher the energy of the nerves, which means a correspondingly higher EMF flow as well. This explains why we are automatically more connected, awake, intelligent and spiritual in high negative ion environments. That is around moving water, in forests, in the country, the mountains and in sunlight. Modern cities, deserts and much of our technology, transportation and architecture are anti-evolutionary, for they lower the ion count of the air and increase the percentage of positive ions we are exposed to.
GRAY GOO MENACE
A range of nanotechnologies is already used in more than 600 consumer products - from electronics to toothpaste - with global sales projected to soar to $2.6 trillion by 2014.
And potentially disastrous consequences
The name of the technology comes from the size of the particles - one nanometer in diameter - a millionth of a millimeter. 80,000 times thinner than a human hair. The particles can pass through membranes protecting the brain or babies in the womb.
The football-shaped C60 fullerene is being used in some anti-ageing products. The creams are said to reduce fine lines and firm the skin. C60 has some antioxidant properties in that it kills the rogue chemicals which damage cells; a high dose can itself damage cells.
A coalition of consumer groups petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to ban the sale of products that contain germ-killing nanosilver particles, from stuffed animals to clothing, arguing that the silver could harm human health, poison aquatic life, and contribute to the rise of antibiotic resistance.
Carbon nanotubes are among the most widely used nanomaterials. Carbon nanotubes can cause the same kind of lung damage as asbestos.
Their tiny size and high surface area make them more chemically reactive and cause them to behave in unpredictable ways. So a substance that's safe at a normal size can become toxic at the nanoscale. Researchers in Singapore reported that nanosilver caused severe developmental problems in zebrafish embryos - bolstering worries about what happens when those antimicrobial products, like soap and clothing, leak silver into the waste stream.
Carbon nanotubes lend extraordinary strength and lightness to bicycle frames and tennis rackets; researchers are also investigating uses in medicine, electronics and other fields.
Manufacturers are lacing ordinary household objects - from toothpaste to teddy bears - with nanoparticles of silver, long known for its disinfecting powers. Convenience items, like stain-resistant sofas and static-free fleece, are a third big category.
The recent UK study found that long, straight CNTs, when injected into lab mice, cause scarring even faster than asbestos. The scarring will lead to cancer.
Nanomaterials are so small that they travel easily, both in the body and in the environment. Their tiny size and high surface area give them unusual characteristics: insoluble materials become soluble; nonconductive ones start conducting electricity; harmless substances can become toxic.
Nanoparticles are easily inhaled. They can pass from the lungs into the bloodstream and other organs. They can even slip through the olfactory nerve into the brain, evading the protective blood-brain barrier. Once they're inside the body, it's not clear how long they remain or what they do. What's more, current science has no way of testing for nano-waste in the air or water, and no way of cleaning up such pollution.
The U.S. government spends $1.5 billion a year on its National Nanotechnology Initiative.
LEVITATING THE STONES
After putting into the tiny island of Kosrae in the remote western Pacific to repair damage to our trimaran sustained during a hurricane at sea, Thea and I were guided into the jungle to view the ancient ruins of Saru.
Imagine our astonishment on seeing huge basalt slabs weighing many tons, fitting into walls more than 20-feet high to comprise an ancient city once serviced by a network of canals.
“How did your people move those heavy stones into place?” I asked an old woman tending her chickens near the ruins. Without hesitation she looked at me and replied, “They sang them into place.”
“Of course,” I said.
I meant it.
How do you think the pyramids were built? The Great Pyramid at Giza contains granite blocks weighing 70 tons fitted together 200 feet above ground. In Bolivia, red sandstone blocks weighing over 100 tons have been moved into precise alignment position at a breath-robbing altitude of 13,000 feet. Red sandstone block weighing 120 tons are fitting into walls near Cuzco, Peru. And in Baalbek, Lebanon, long before the Roman Empire, three 800 ton granite blocks were raised up 20 feet high and supported on 300 ton blocks fitted so closely, is impossible to insert a knife blade between them.
More than two decades later, I can across Swedish engineer Olaf Alexanderson's account concerning the ancient construction of the megalithic ruins of Nan Madol, which we also saw while calling at Ponape: “We know from the priests of the Far East that they were able to lift heavy boulders up high mountains with the help of groups of various sounds... the knowledge of the various vibrations in the audio range demonstrates to a scientist of physics that a vibrating and condensed sound field can nullify the power of gravitation.”
The monks in Tibet were “fully conversant with the laws governing the structure of matter.” Beating loud drums, singing and chanting in a rising tempo… “The big stone block started to rock and sway, and suddenly it took off into the air with an increasing speed in the direction of the platform in front of the cave hole 250 meters high. After three minutes of ascent it landed on the platform. Continuously they brought new blocks to the meadow, and the monks using this method, transported 5 to 6 blocks per hour on a parabolic flight track approximately 500 meters long and 250 meters high.
What is going on? One answer: “Sound is a wave, a transmission of energy by a series of vibrations.”
“The secret is in the geometric placement of the musical instruments in relation to the stones to be levitated, and the harmonic tuning of the drums and trumpets. There is not much doubt that the Tibetans had possession of the secrets relating to the geometric structure of matter, and the methods of manipulating the harmonic values.”
In the West, acoustic levitation was first experimented with successfully in the 1940s.
Now, scientists working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico are discovering how to levitating objects using sound.
CREATIONISM EVEN MORE ROCKY NOW
Scientists have thrown another rock through the Creationists' belief that Earth was formed by an elderly bearded gent 4,000 years ago.
This one is 4.3 billion years old.
Earth's oldest rock is biding its time on the northeast coast of Hudson Bay, Canada. Heretics from Washington's Carnegie Institute and McGill University in Montreal determined its birthday using precise geochemical measurements. They did not attempt sonic levitation.
SOURCES QUOTED ABOVE:
Energy Bulletin Jan 2/08; Der Spiegel Apr 17/08; Guardian Apr 3/05; Georgia Research Tech News Mar 20/05; energybulletin.net; Independent Sept 23/08; Reuters Jan 31/06; NewScientist.com Aug 11/05; Baltimore Sun Dec 16/04; National Science Foundation Press Release Dec 17/03; greenguerrilla.com
SUN'S CONTRIBUTION TO WARMING: “NEGLIGIBLE”
Surprise! Global warming is being caused by us - not those pesky solar wobbles and eruptions. “If anything,” the Naval Research Laboratory and NASA have found, old sol has contributed “a very slight overall cooling in the past 25 years.”
Their study on “How Natural And Anthropogenic Influences Alter Global And Regional Surface Temperatures: 1889 To 2006” found: “None of the natural processes can account for the overall warming trend in global surface temperatures.”
In fact, over the past century, temperature trends produced by solar and volcanic eruptions “are at least an order of magnitude smaller than the observed surface temperature.”
In other words: “Solar forcing contributed negligible long-term warming in the past 25 years.”
Unlike woo woo deniers, this analysis is based on actual observations:
Calling the notion that “changes in sun spots or solar output” has been “the primary driver - or even a large component - of recent warming… the biggest myth,” a major 2007 study had already concluded: “Here we show that over the past 20 years, all the trends in the Sun that could have had an influence on the Earth's climate have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures.
Ammann 2007: “Although solar and volcanic effects appear to dominate most of the slow climate variations within the past thousand years, the impacts of greenhouse gases have dominated since the second half of the last century.”
Foukal 2006: “The variations measured from spacecraft since 1978 are too small to have contributed appreciably to accelerated global warming over the past 30 years.”
Usoskin 2005: “During these last 30 years the solar total irradiance, solar UV irradiance and cosmic ray flux has not shown any significant secular trend, so that at least this most recent warming episode must have another source.”
Stott 2003: “Most warming over the last 50 yr is likely to have been caused by increases in greenhouse gases.”
Waple 1999: “Little evidence to suggest that changes in irradiance are having a large impact on the current warming trend.”
Frolich 1998: “Solar radiative output trends contributed little of the 0.2°C increase in the global mean surface temperature in the past decade.”
SUPERCOLLIDER COULD TURN EARTH INTO A SUPERNOVA
The Large Hadron Collider “probably” won't suck us into a black hole. But it could trigger a Bose - not boss - supernova, curious scientists say.
Bose Einstein Condensate's are so frigging cold they occupy the lowest possible quantum state of matter. Physicists have been playing with BECs since the early 1990's. But in 2001, Elizabeth Donley and colleagues - oops! - caused a mini-BEC to explode. Scientists still aren't sure what happened. Or why the BEC blew.
Everyone knows that Superfluid helium is a BEC. But instead of flying airships, the LHC is using 700,000 liters of this very cold helium to chill out their supercollider before smashing tiny particles together using some of the most powerful rmagnets on this creaking planet.
When they do, we could be looking at - briefly - a very Big Bang.
CERN, which handles the EU's nuclear nightmare, insists: “There is no physics whatsoever which suggests that Helium could undergo any kind of unforeseen catastrophic explosion.”
But KFC at the physics arXiv blog wryly comments: “Ruling out catastrophies is certainly useful but the ability to rule out unforeseen ones is truly amazing.”
Presumably, DDT, asbestos, Depleted Uranium, Thalidomide and cell phones are also entirely safe.
And Donley's blooper must have defied physics.
At least the worry-wart Walter Wagner has been bounced out of court after filing a barrage of lawsuits to prevent turning on the Large Hadron Collider. U.S. District Court Judge Helen Gillmor dismissed the case on the minor technicality that Geneva isn't actually under U.S. jurisdiction.
With the broken LHC shut down for repairs this winter, we can look forward to another few months of the Earth remaining more or less intact.
ELECTRIC CAR UPDATES FROM ZENN DAVE
People are now getting up to 40 miles range in their electric Zenns using “hyper mileage” techniques: No hard starts, no hard stops, and maintaining top tire pressure as actually indicated on the sidewalls of the tires.
“Putting big knobby tires on an SUV is one of the stupidest things you can do,” Dave Silver snorts.
The inertia of convention is holding things back. Silver tells people he drives his car virtually for free - no gas, virtually zero maintenance - “and they just can't get their heads around it.”
The Zenn dealer “can't tell you how many green summits I've been too” where people are shouting across the table: 'Ethanol sucks, you need to go electric.' 'Electric cars suck, get a bicycle.' 'Bicycles suck.' Et nauseating cetera. Shut up and just start doing something,” he tells these critics. “Exploit ever possible niche.”
Even 30 mph electric cars like the Zenn “work for a lot of us.” After all, most people do most of their driving - up to 90% statistics show - around town. Silver invites people who insist they need a faster, longer range car to monitor their speed and distance for one week. Almost everyone is astonished to find that they rarely go over 25 mph on gridlocked streets. And they maybe maintain 40 on the freeway.
The point is, he says, “We can do something immediately. Why wait for a highway car when you can do something right now?” [Interview with the author]
Cautions one practitioner: “You have to avoid miscellaneous background sounds as much as possible… Any background noises carry a risk of the work to suddenly drop from levitation due to breakdown of the established crystalline resonance in the stone… You have to avoid as best you can electromagnetic radiation from all kinds of sources like radio stations, cell phone towers, power transmission lines. The EM radiation may cause a sudden break down of crystalline vibration pattern…. Composite stones like granite will be much more complicated and therefore difficult to resonate and levitate due to their greater mineral, chemical and crystalline complexity.”
Says another: “Magnetic fields are generated in a few ways, of which the finest way is magic. Yes, I said magic and I mean magic.”
And another: “Monolith levitation is not a true antigravity. It does not cancel or reverse gravity. It opposes gravity like a chair you are sitting on opposes gravity. It is magnetic levitation of a material in a super-conductive like state of oscillation.”
American acoustics engineer Tom Danley and his colleagues at Intersonics worked on Acoustic Levitation and Positioning Devices for NASA. Their 1991 U.S. patent states: “An acoustic levitator includes a pair of opposed sound sources which have interfering sound waves producing acoustic energy wells in which an object can be levitated. The phase of one sound source may be changed relative to the other in order to move the object along an axis between the sound sources.”
NASA's budget cutbacks forced the end of that work.
