New Civilization News: HopeDance And Waking Up    
 HopeDance And Waking Up38 comments
picture8 Apr 2008 @ 10:03, by Richard Carlson

No more "evidence" of collapse is needed; it's happening here and now and with dizzying speed. I no longer feel a need to "convince" anyone; I'm simply sitting back and watching the inevitable unfold, and as I report the daily news, I can scarcely keep up with the events that have turned prophets into historians.

---Carolyn Baker, historian and psychoanalyst
www.carolynbaker.net , her valuable site

We Bring Democracy To The Fish

It is unacceptable that fish prey on each other.
For their comfort and safety, we will liberate them
into fishfarms with secure, durable boundaries
that exclude predators. Our care will provide
for their liberty, health, happiness, and nutrition.
Of course all creatures need to feel useful.
At maturity the fish will discover their purposes.

---Donald Hall, from White Apples and the Taste of Stone. © Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007.

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.

---Rachel Carson

The photo is called "Kelley's Tiger Lily," though that isn't what the flower really is, and can be found at [link]

The news about climate and economy are so disturbing every day, that even people who never talk to me about current affairs are doing so now. People acknowledge impending disaster and don't know what to do. What is there to do? Are we doomed?

This must be brief this morning, as I have taken so much time to read. But among the first articles to show up was something Carolyn Baker sent along to subscribers during her fundraiser. It's from a free magazine in Southern California apparently, which is called HopeDance. I couldn't find it at the actual site so I don't know when it was written. It is lengthy but it leads one through the "syndrome" of waking up from this lifestyle of convenience most Americans anyway have fallen into over the last 50 years. It's not impossible and in fact it ain't even so hard. Take the time and you'll feel better at the end~~~

[link]


Beyond that, the news is more scary than ever. Hopefully Paul Krugman's column yesterday already has been recommended to you. He explained what's happening to the price of grain and why~~~

[link]

For those climate change skeptics who advocate the cosmic ray theory, scientists Sunday from Lancaster and Durham Universities offered proof the theory isn't correct, and it's carbon emissions after all~~~

[link]

Even worse, James Hansen, head of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said yesterday even our most extreme goals for carbon reduction aren't good enough. He lays out what he projects now~~~

[link]

And the World Health Organization put out its predictions yesterday about how climate change will bring new outbreaks of disease and death. In fact, as surely you know, it already is happening~~~

[link]

Time to get busy...with that first step you can take in this Dance.



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38 comments

8 Apr 2008 @ 18:41 by vaxen : Scary?
You're taught to feed on fear from the moment you get out of womb flash forest. Smack! Wail! Suck...

There do happen to be antidotes to the conditioned fear you so lovingly cultivate via mass media delusions.

Here is a good place to start: http://www.blackwaterusa.com/

DAO = Drugs, Arms, Oil
GOD = Gold, Oil, Drugs
GOD purchases arms,
Kills DAO by cutting
DAOs' arms off...

My GOD is bigger than your DAO!

Moyock!

Innovation Begins with Experience

http://www.blackwaterusa.com/press_releases/default.asp  



9 Apr 2008 @ 20:37 by a-d : Waking Up!
Yes, little by little... one person/group at the time it seems.... as a slap in the Sleeper's face is that one: "ONE TOO Many" ...the one that wakes them up!...

[ http://ehrenreich.blogs.com/barbaras_blog/2008/04/truckers-protes.html ]  



9 Apr 2008 @ 22:52 by vaxen : Nice A-D!
Maybe there is hope after all? And I won't have to go to Texas for the last stand?

http://cyberdeck13.blogspot.com/

And in the right hand column, Cygberdeck13, you'll see twitter space. There you can click on the blue hypertext or hand load the tiny urls to goto some interesting articulos...

Hello jazzolog. Como estas amigo? Por que ala silencia?  



9 Apr 2008 @ 23:05 by istvan : America.inc.
America is a business. Not much more than capitalizational configurations of who is the cleverest. Of course the truck drivers are complaining. Their bottom line is aching. Now that the money is dwindling som people may think of doing something, like "just say no to ripoffs". Most peole in "america" are only interested $wise.
Do not worry revolution is off the table, it has been offshored long time ago.  



9 Apr 2008 @ 23:34 by vaxen : Well...
it is good to see you Istvan cf: http://www.darpa.mil/

I am subscribed to some good publications that the following people http://www.imf.org/ publish. See ya Istvan...good luck.  



10 Apr 2008 @ 15:18 by jazzolog : A Good Fascist State
also likes to have the military front and center. In fact, Military is the key. It's the biggest customer for Business, and it's State's job to keep the order forms crossing purchasing's desk. Jobs, jobs, jobs. It's always more convenient for Military to protect Business if Business is located outside our boundaries. More expensive, sure, but it's worth the price so we don't have too many soldiers marching around Motherland factories to protect the inventory inside. We remember it made the Germans nervous to have that goosestepping going on in every little town. We also learned from Katrina that Blackwater doesn't come off so well killing off "looters." Empire always is the more convenient strategy for the Good Fascist State.

But this piece of the jazzoLOG really isn't about that stuff. What we have with climate change is something totally unexpected. Not within the plan. A little like Jesus and the Roman Empire. Fascist State isn't set up for flexible creativity, so the normal response has to be it's some kind of commie plot. Or the hippies. Even Bin Laden didn't anticipate it.

What Business needs to do and is beginning to do is snap out of the denial and realize this is the Next Thing, the Way Out! The CEO for Sunpower says he knows where there's a hundred square miles of desert in New Mexico, with only 2 families to be relocated. Take that land, fill it with solar reflectors, connected to Stirling engines, and he'll provide electric power from the sun for the entire continental United States. Goodbye coal and oil. Hello New World.  



10 Apr 2008 @ 20:05 by quinty : If
Obama is elected he will have to become far more radical than he appears to be now.

If elected he will have to use his talent for words to do a great deal of educating and persuading. And considering a large block of Americans, led by the far right, don’t even believe in manmade global warming (this is where we are in 2008?) he may have his work cut out for him.

Pundits often comment on how the American people have not been asked to “sacrifice anything for their country” in recent years. Certainly not for the Iraq war, since the tab has been deferred and those who are asked to fight comprise only a small percentage of our nation’s young. (If we had a national draft would we still have this war?)

A crash green energy revolution would certainly change all that, challenging the American people: and Obama might have the persuasive charisma to pull it off. Many Americans, in studies and interviews, appear ready to be challenged in a Kennedyesque manner. And much of the private sector is ready to go green. (There large profits.) Well, let’s see what can come of it?

Clinton and McCain both acknowledge manmade global warming. As for what Hillary would actually do about it remains a ? mark. She may be better than Obama. Would her corporate ties get in the way? Probably not since green is green in more ways than one.

McCain, if he’s serious, might have the advantage of being a Republican to build support. But at times it’s hard not to believe he is somehow off balance with some of the odd remarks he makes. He often confuses Shia with Sunnis with al Qaeda with anyone else and just today or yesterday claimed he would cut the deficit, the way Reagan did. Problem is, Reagan tripled it. (That according to today’s Huffington Post.)

I heard Obama recently speak favorably of the use of ethanol in Brazil. Illinois is a corn state. Please tell me it isn’t so that Obama sees corn ethanol as a solution, the way Bush does?  



11 Apr 2008 @ 09:29 by jazzolog : More Info On Solar Power
Since my remark yesterday about Sunpower's potential for solar electric in this country, I've put my brain through "enhanced interrogation" (Bush's new term for what goes on at our concentration camps) to try to be sure that's what the company's CEO said. My wife heard him too and verified the space required was 100 square miles, but I'm not absolutely positive. Maybe I'll write him. At any rate this statement is at Sunpower's site~~~

"Sunpower was involved in a solar dish/Stirling engine program in the early 90's, involving the U.S. DOE, Cummins Power Generation Company, and others. We developed and supplied a series of free-piston Stirling engine-alternators for that project, from about 1989 to 1994. Information regarding the project is online. Solar power generation is an ideal application of Sunpower's engine technology, and is becoming more commercially viable as conventional energy costs soar."
{link:http://www.sunpower.com/index.php?pg=21#17}

A link also is provided to this compendium on solar dish/Stirling engine technology~~~

http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=10130410

Bill Henderson is a TruthOut contributor, who took off on the new James Hansen projections in a stunning article Wednesday. Here it is~~~

Jim Hansen, the Big Ice Melt and the Mainstream Media
By Bill Henderson
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 09 April 2008

Imagine you have a choice between two scenarios on the future impact of climate change:

Scenario A: Climate change is real and human-caused, a gradual increase in global temperature that we have a long time to do something about (2050 targets) before drought, sea level rise, etc. get too severe; climate change can be effectively mitigated within continuing political and economic business as usual with carbon taxes and more efficient green technology.

Scenario B: Climate change is an emergency where we must make Draconian cuts to our use of fossil fuels immediately and globally in order to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere this decade so that we don't continue over a tipping point where both polar ice caps melt completely, sea level rises by 75 meters, and conditions become fiercely inhospitable to humanity and most of the species with which we share this small blue planet. Political and economic business as usual is far too slow and path dependent for mitigation of this scale, so we must innovate a World War II-style government mobilization so that a systemic reconfiguration of the global economy is possible. http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB3/Contents.htm

Thousands of mainstream media articles and commentaries on TV, in newspapers and magazines, inform about climate change Scenario A, but there has been minimal, almost nonexistent mainstream coverage of Scenario B even though its main proponents - James Hansen and his NASA climate science team - have released several papers explaining this nonlinear vision of climate change focusing upon the unpredicted rapid melting of the polar ice caps.

Very few people outside of climate scientists and climate activists even know about Hansen's polar ice melt hypothesis and what it means to each of our distant and more immediate futures. There is probably a scientific debate raging in labs and symposia about this new and compelling vision of climate change, but since publics globally remain, surrealistically, almost completely uninformed, how would we know?.

For example, Andrew Revkin, the NY Times expert and dean of American climate science reportage, mentioned the Hansen et el latest paper, "Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?" http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf only through his Dotearth blog with no coverage in the Times newspaper at all. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/back-to-1988-on-co2-says-nasas-hansen/#comment-17868 At Dotearth he quotes from the paper's summary:

"Humanity today, collectively, must face the uncomfortable fact that industrial civilization itself has become the principal driver of global climate. If we stay our present course, using fossil fuels to feed a growing appetite for energy-intensive lifestyles, we will soon leave the climate of the Holocene, the world of human history. The eventual response to doubling preindustrial atmospheric CO2 likely would be a nearly ice-free planet.

"Humanity's task of moderating human-caused global climate change is urgent. Ocean and ice sheet inertias provide a buffer delaying full response by centuries, but there is a danger that human-made forcings could drive the climate system beyond tipping points such that change proceeds out of our control. The time available to reduce the human-made forcing is uncertain, because models of the global system and critical components such as ice sheets are inadequate. However, climate response time is surely less than the atmospheric lifetime of the human-caused perturbation of CO2. Thus, remaining fossil fuel reserves should not be exploited without a plan for retrieval and disposal of resulting atmospheric CO2. Paleoclimate evidence and ongoing global changes imply that today's CO2, about 385 ppm, is already too high to maintain the climate to which humanity, wildlife and the rest of the biosphere are adapted."

But the vast majority of New York Times newspaper readers, Americans in general and people globally have never even heard of this emerging vision of climate change, let alone been informed and educated by critical commentary from those with relevant expertise.

Hansen's emerging climate change vision and climate change A are almost mutually exclusive. Today's nascent climate change mitigation measures, including carbon taxes and cap and trade, remain completely within the gradual, linear, conventional wisdom. This level of mitigation does not address the big ice sheet melt as a crucial tipping point. No governments anywhere - not even those governments that have led in acknowledging climate change as a real and serious problem - are even remotely considering mitigation measures of an immediacy and scale needed to try to return atmospheric CO2 emission levels below 350 ppm. Climate change B is an impossibility within our present political and economic systems.

Which is probably why you haven't heard about Hansen's new climate change information and possible Draconian mitigation strategies in the mainstream media.

If you want to know more about climate change B, you can go to Hansen's web site and read the papers and other presentations detailing this vision. http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/ You can search through blogs for a critical appraisal of the science and what it means for present mitigation strategies. http://climateprogress.org/2008/03/17/hansen-et-al-must-read-back-to-350-ppm-or-risk-an-ice-free-planet/

And there is an excellent presentation of the Arctic melt science, including invaluable communications and policy formation chapters based upon this science by two Australians, Sutton and Spratt, in a report, Climate Code Red, published in February. http://www.climatecodered.net/ Their characterization of this climate change as an emergency requiring immediate action beyond the capacity of political and economic business as usual arguably makes Climate Code Red the most important document published so far this year - a possible Nobel Prize contender even. But you almost certainly have never even heard about its existence before now, because Climate Code Red received no mainstream coverage at all, not a single mention - let alone pertinent critical coverage.

An equivalent report, even one released by an NGO (Climate Code Red was published by the NGO Friends of the Earth) usually receives media coverage averaging over one hundred Google News citations. A report on commercial adoption of genetically modified crops, released the same week in February, for example, had more than 160 citations with coverage by all mainstream broadcasters and publishers. Sutton and Spratt's emergency response message was obviously too heretical, hence this outrageous news anomaly.

So your choice: a climate change that doesn't threaten your lifestyle and future aside from a couple of pennies increase at the pump (the new climate change denial?), or you can choose to search out more about this year's very inconvenient truth about climate change, a sobering vision of climate change equivalent maybe to receiving the news from your doctor that you have a potentially terminal disease with only a slim chance of survival (our kids' future, humanity's future) - unless you make seemingly impossible, drastic lifestyle changes immediately.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/040908EA.shtml

And if that's not enough to think about, Reuters on Wednesday seemed pretty much alone in reporting a UN study on the oceans that states, "Warming trends in a third of the world's large ocean regions are two to four times greater than previously reported averages, increasing the risk to marine life and fisheries."
http://uk.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUKHAN29074220080409?sp=true  



12 Apr 2008 @ 08:28 by vaxen : Tee, Hee!
No, it isn't enough.

The majority of "hot topics" are debated by people with very little knowledge of the subject. A good example of this is global warming - the majority of people you speak to on this subject will tell you how we must change our habits to prevent global warming, but few will know what "anthropogenic global warming" is. Spend a little time learning what the real experts on these faddish topics say and you simply can't go wrong. Try to remember some of the names of authors so you can quote them.



1. Erinaceous

Like a hedgehog

2. Lamprophony

Loudness and clarity of voice

3. Depone

To testify under oath

4. Finnimbrun

A trinket or knick-knack

5. floccinaucinihilipilification

Estimation that something is valueless.

http://tradewinds.lefora.com/  



12 Apr 2008 @ 09:24 by jazzolog : DinoVax
Ah yes, the annoying bugaboo that someone---ANYone---would dare to tell me I should change my habits is enough to prompt my reaching for the shotgun. Take one more step and I'll scatter your brains all over that computer screen. If only we could be sure such dinosaurs as Vaxen would be the first to croak, our evolutionary worries would be over. But no, those tough old birds, armed to their rotten teeth, probably will prevail. I'm reminded 'twas John Ruskin who said, “A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small parcel.” O for a cool head around a hot topic!  


13 Apr 2008 @ 03:41 by vaxen : Heh, heh...
Oh you've plenty of em up there on the hill, to be sure. The only dinosaurus around here, though, is you Tuck. Finnimbrun? You voted for B. Hussein Obama...I didn't! Read the latest at hack the vote? And Hillary/McCain are whirling around like Dervishes. Sad that Rumi U'Din had to pass...gas. BTW how much is gas in your neck of the hood these days? And have the snow storms given way to flooding?

Now back to your global warming codgel...nice day, here, BTW, Y Tu Brute? Sic Semper Tyrannis! ;)

http://www.bullionvault.com/  



13 Apr 2008 @ 09:50 by jazzolog : Let Them Eat Ethanol
The starvation wars begin I'm afraid. The Toronto Globe and Mail published an in-depth article yesterday, discussing rising food prices and the first attacks and who's dying. This is tough stuff, and I'm wondering if Yanks will ignore this news as much as we have the invasion of Iraq.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080410.wfood0411/BNStory/International/home/?pageRequested=all  



13 Apr 2008 @ 20:21 by a-d : to continue here on
your latest comment: We really are in deep shit!....

[ http://www.rense.com/general81/rise.htm ]

SOMETHING HAS TO END THIS MADNESS and it better be to OUR FAVOR!...or else.... bye bye Planet Earth!  



13 Apr 2008 @ 21:25 by vaxen : Well...
it does make for good copy. Take it up with the Federal Reserve boys or the IMF or the World Bank. They create such genocidal dithering for abstemious profit. FUD is great for - some - businesses. But if you've been watching Tenebrious Blite then you know that everything is just peachy keen.

Don't you want another hundred years war in Iraqo-Iran, the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan (Opium is up!), South America and Southwestern USA? I thought you supported, jazzolog, Big Brothers minions and were apt of the frenzy?

Take it up with the Tri-Lats, like B. Hussein Obama-Rama, or his brethren - like J. Carter or J. T. Laudermilk III or Orlin Grabbe.

Hope you've got ammo for that shot gun cause we cummin ta getcha, man! ;) And how come they never tell you WHY the 'prices' are rising? Didn't Yosef, of the many colored coat fame, face some of the very same 'engeandered (gerrymandering?)' problems thousands of years ago? Progress? Silly notion that. The price of ammo is rising too. Duh! Oooo a nice black snake just fell through the roof! Marvellous!

http://www.cyberdeck13.com/  



14 Apr 2008 @ 07:19 by vaxen : AGW
A little more on "Anthropogenic Global Warming..."

Anthropogenic Global Warming Hoax Heats Up

By Tim Wood
04 Apr 2008 at 02:42 PM GMT-04:00

NOTE: The BBC story referenced here was modified - without notification to readers - after publication to reinforce some global warming dogmas. The BBC's compliance with activist demands for the story to be recast is detailed by Marc Sheppard on American Thinker.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/04/bbc_folds_then_folds_again.html

St. LOUIS (ResourceInvestor.com http://www.resourceinvestor.com/ ) -- The BBC today aired a story confirming what responsible scientists have been saying for some time – that there has been no notable variation in global temperatures for the past ten years.

This is an inconvenient truth for the vast edifice being built atop the myth that human related carbon dioxide has exceeded some imagined tipping point, turning the world into a deadly hotbox.

The World Meteorological Organization literally blames the El Niño Pacific current for upsetting the carefully orchestrated media meme of runaway heating caused by all that nasty capitalist production. What they should be admitting is the relative ignorance of scientists about all the factors that drive climate variation. The fact that the WMO and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were incapable of reflecting El Niño's impact on their temperature models simply underscores how politically driven and unscientific climate science has become. The "consensus" models must be considered worthless after years of failed predictions. To be fair, the IPCC models admit that they do not even take Pacific Decadal Oscillation into account.

The correspondence between El Niño and recent climate events and trends is striking; no less striking than correlations with Sun spot activity and precipitation systems. Indeed, the WMO admits that El Niño, "has contributed to torrential rains in Australia and to some of the coldest temperatures in memory in snow-bound parts of China." Yet there are countless media stories and journal articles blaming human related carbon dioxide emissions for these events.

Despite the facts directly contradicting the predictions of ever-hotter years unless "greenhouse gas emissions" were severely curtailed, the WMO and others continue to spin the warming myth saying we can be sure 1998's average temperature will be exceeded at some point in the near future.

Laughably, Adam Scaife, lead scientist for Modelling Climate Variability at the Hadley Centre in Exeter, told the BBC that La Niña is just noise amidst a larger climate change signal. Isn't it amazing that mere noise can disrupt every major climate change model…

It's worth reviewing why no reasonable person subscribes to the idea that human related carbon dioxide is causing catastrophic global warming. Some basic points:

(Read More Here: http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=41685)  



14 Apr 2008 @ 07:32 by vaxen : And more...
Editorial: The Great Global Warming Hoax?

Editor's Introductory Note: Our planet has been slowly warming since last emerging from the "Little Ice Age" of the 17th century, often associated with the Maunder Minimum. Before that came the "Medieval Warm Period", in which temperatures were about the same as they are today. Both of these climate phenomena are known to have occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, but several hundred years prior to the present, the majority of the Southern Hemisphere was primarily populated by indigenous peoples, where science and scientific observation was limited to non-existent. Thus we can not say that these periods were necessarily "global".

However, "Global Warming" in recent historical times has been an undisputable fact, and no one can reasonably deny that.

But we're hearing far too often that the "science" is "settled", and that mankind's contribution to the natural CO2 in the atmosphere has been the principal cause of an increasing "Greenhouse Effect", which is the root "cause" of global warming. We're also hearing that "all the world's scientists now agree on this settled science", and it is now time to quickly and most radically alter our culture, and prevent a looming global catastrophe. And last, but not least, we're seeing a sort of mass hysteria sweeping our culture which is really quite disturbing. Historians ponder how the entire nation of Germany could possibly have goose-stepped into place in such a short time, and we have similar unrest. Have we become a nation of overnight loonies?

Sorry folks, but we're not exactly buying into the Global Hysteria just yet. We know a great deal about atmospheric physics, (bio) and from the onset, many of the claims were just plain fishy. The extreme haste with which seemingly the entire world immediately accepted the idea of Anthropogenic ( man-made ) Global Warming made us more than a little bit suspicious that no one had really taken a close look at the science. We also knew that the catch-all activity today known as "Climate Science" was in its infancy, and that atmospheric modeling did not and still does not exist which can predict changes in the weather or climate more than about a day or two in advance.

So the endless stream of dire predictions of what was going to happen years or decades from now if we did not drastically reduce our CO2 production by virtually shutting down the economies of the world appeared to be more the product of radical political and environmental activism rather than science. Thus, we embarked on a personal quest for more information, armed with a strong academic background in postgraduate physics and a good understanding of the advanced mathematics necessary in such a pursuit. This fundamental knowledge of the core principles of matter and its many exceptionally complex interactions allowed us to research and understand the foundations of many other sciences. In short, we read complex scientific articles in many other scientific disciplines with relative ease and good understanding - like most folks read comic books.

More Here: http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html

And tons more if you'd care to debate the so called "issue" which is mostly 'political (Fear gets votes!)' huff then fluff!  



14 Apr 2008 @ 09:22 by jazzolog : Vaxen's Blinders
He's like an old horse plodding to the glue factory. Never in my relatively brief association with the guy have I observed him learn anything from someone's article or comment. He comes complete with his own compendium to dump upon our heads. Your Cyber13 link or whatever it is is dead, by the way pal.

So now both the World Bank and Wall Street Journal are concerned the people are rioting before they starve. And of course they want more cash. There's always money to be made off the poor, the widows, orphans, the halt, the lame, the blind...even old horses.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/13/AR2008041301972.html

{link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120813134819111573.html?mod=googlenews_wsj}

http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-AL176_FOODPi_20080413204705.jpg

The Haitians.

One needn't shut down economies to eliminate carbon. In fact, both Sweden and Iceland boomed after moving to advanced energy.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/rfk_manifesto200805 and you get an inspiring view of Madonna too. (Encourage the magazine by picking one up at the newsstand, and read that probe into Monsanto.)

And now, if you'll excuse me, it's Earth Week at OU. Lots to do!!
http://www.ohio.edu/outlook/07-08/April/419.cfm  



14 Apr 2008 @ 15:43 by quinty : What I don't
understand about the No-Manmade-Global-Warming types is their violence.

What do they have against cleaning up? Disposing of our waste and garbage in a decent manner? Against having a clean and healthy planet?

Why get so angry at other people for that?

Now we know that such outfits, say, like Pacific Lumber attack full pronged because "tree huggers" threaten profit and their control of old growth forests. A violent campaign on their part is understandable. We know that other exploiters and polluters don't want to see their profits cut because they can no longer dump their waste into streams, rivers, oceans, the earth and air. Their violence is understandable too.

And when you look back a few decades at the right’s ideology, how it has evolved, you can see that many of those who backed those corporate interests have, over time, shed their original motivations of self-interest, leaving only the husk of their hard ideology. They hated “tree huggers” then and they hate today’s version for who they are. Even when the profit motive no longer motivates their search for self-serving arguments.

Fortunately, green will be enormously profitable. And much of corporate America is eager to hop aboard, if only government would help establish the necessary infrastructure, which the private sector can’t do alone. My understanding and knowledge of this is small, but a public/private approach appears to be the way to go.

So why so much violence on the part of eco-disaster deniers? After all, even if the greens are wrong wouldn’t we all be better off with a clean, healthy environment? And does green vindication mean a total collapse? An eco disaster? That only such a disaster will prove the greens were right?

But aren’t sustainable clean energy resources decent objectives in themselves? Without depending upon foreign energy? Or oil? Do we have a right to perpetually use the Earth as a sewer, a cesspool out of convenience or to increase profit? Or out of sheer laziness?  



14 Apr 2008 @ 17:42 by vaxen : No...
fat faced man it isn't dead but you are. You were always dumping till I took you to task one day in the chat rooms about your endless proliferations about 'shit!' Yeah...the kind babies play with! And your prostrate and, and, and...so F**K off man! For an educator you are in sorry need of an education, a real one. What do you teach anyway? 3rd grade?

Earth week my ass! You're a sorry bunch of fools lying to yourselves in order to filch another loving spoonful for your coffers. Democrat my ass! Lying bunch of idiots. Anyone who dares to go up against youor nonsense is autmatically labeled a this or a that and violence?

Violence is "tree huggers" pounding huge spikes into trees where loggers are cutting the old growth that new growth may take it's place or clear cutting the underbrush, take a look at all the fires in the USA caused because of ECO policiy and 'green' skulduggery! take a good long look at your own state! OSHA is a joke and so are you fat man! Talk about rotten teeth and dinosaurs? Look in the mirror, punk!

I hope for your sake your pathetic 'shotgun' is loaded. You'll end up shooting yourself in the foot anyway so what me worry about your pathetic "I'll blow your head all over the monitor" " Fuck you jazzolog and the horse that dragged you in here...you're an asshole and so is your lying philosophy of 'global warming!' A charade if ever there was one. Back to your agenda 21, fool, we've got your number. Liberal? Your not even close to a Jefferson other than the Trilateral Clintonista kind.

http://cyberdeck13.blogspot.com/  



14 Apr 2008 @ 20:36 by quinty : Vax
please take your meds..... Or turn yourself in?

One or the other.

But if you are out on the street don't look at any babies in any strollers. They may be traumatized for life. At three or four months they shouldn't be exposed yet to life's adult horrors.

Do you dig violence? My god it clings to you, wherever you go. Provoking and receiving it. Creating it with your silly and arrogant beliefs. What are you searching for? Disciples? Morons who agree with your point of view?

Libertarians? They include some of the most arrogant morons in the world.

Have you ever been wrong? But I suppose the Shining Light of the Godhead was installed into your cranium just a few seconds before your were born. And your eyes are blazing beacons onto the night.

So Vax..... go away. Please. You don't like us, fine. So go away. Play patty cakes with your fellow Libertarians. Dream of a free world. Sneer at those who differ. Console yourselves in your minority with your superiority. Dwell in whatever fantasies you like.

But for the love of god man, just go away!  



14 Apr 2008 @ 20:52 by Vibe @76.173.37.120 : Global warming
I think there are truths on both sides of whether global warming is real or not. We do have to admit that for a part of the world, the industrial revolution greatly polluted our planet, unintentionally, often unknowingly - certainly in the early days few even considered the ramifications of pollution or thought it would be a lasting problem. But, since people have known, there was reason enough to curtail it, to change it and still make a profit. There is still time for this and it is happening.

The earth is going through cycles, so is the universe, and each cycle changes a bit. What we are doing on earth pollution wise does not leave our atmosphere and effect the other planets - as some would have you believe. What affects everything is CONSCIOUSNESS. And, there is a domino effect in that way, to and from everywhere in existence.

I don't believe humans are solely responsible for global warming. All planets go through periods of ice ages and heat spells, storms and every kind of change all of its own accord and consciousness. Same with earth.  



14 Apr 2008 @ 22:03 by mortimer : Excuse meme but,
I don’t mean to take this post off topic but, I don’t think you really mean to be hurting each other?  


14 Apr 2008 @ 22:34 by Vibe @76.173.37.120 : more
Vax, look at the massive amount of plastic in the oceans - there is a glop double the size of Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean. Plastic breaks down into tiny pieces, the marine life eats it, it ends up with those of us who eat fish. Plastic ingested, as you probably know, has already been causing infertility, miscarriages, and affects every organ in the body, causes cancers and all kinds of disease. This is only going to get worse unless it's cleaned up and we change production. But, that is NOT about global warming.  


14 Apr 2008 @ 23:27 by Quinty @72.195.137.102 : Mortimer,
I can relate to and understand your feelings regarding this. But I spoke out of long endurance and familiarity. Years worth, in fact. And enough is enough. I hope you can understand?  


14 Apr 2008 @ 23:34 by vaxen : I do not...
work for Global Oil Rot and the Amerikan dream! You wouldn't believe who I work for. In in any case these two so called 'liberals' are about as liberal as the Queen of England...in fact they both remind me of two old Nellie Queens with their acid embrace of non techtonic verbal diarrhea.

So very green yet...I'm sure they both drive Ethonol gas polluting vehicles to work, and have supported that industry for years, with the excuse that...there are no alternatives and we have to get to work. Twitter, twitter...

http://www.twitter.com/vaxen_var

CP once said something quaint about these two old Nellie Queens...

"If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn" - Charlie Parker

Now YOU take YOUR meds quintabus and scream geronimo at the top of your feather dusted lungs and that...swishingly, moron.  



14 Apr 2008 @ 23:37 by vaxen : Oh...
of course they love to hurt others, mortimer, they're liberals! Liberals with dulcet egos they wear on their sleeves and chant the Kyrie Eleison in unison whilst ogling crotch...

Neither one of them have ever been to war, and wouldn't go if their lives depended on it, but they sure like de bone! Ask jazzo about his excruciating painful ass and what caused it?

"The world is an information simulation running on a multidimensional space-time screen." - ;)

Matter, charge, energy, movement...

Nunquam Ante, Nunquam Iterum. Civitas Orbis Terrarum.

I listen to Depeche Mode, jazzoplug listens to...Artie Shaw! I wear Doc Martins, jazzoplug wears...gum shoes! Now you tell me who, just who is the phracking dinosaur? Sheeyit! jazzostrumpet, jazzowanker! That's who...

Too da loo.

Technovagator

http://stormband.vox.com/  



15 Apr 2008 @ 00:01 by mortimer : Vax Pic ...
… listens to Depeche Mode and wears Doc Martins http://a5.vox.com/6a00cd9713fd384cd500f48cee7f9d0002-pi

one reason you guys hurting each other is because you do care.

example: if you did not care about jazzo, then perhaps you would not comment at all.  



15 Apr 2008 @ 10:31 by jazzolog : Floating Trash & Mountaintop Experience
I used to get pretty upset when people flamed each other and me at this NCN Log. The response from die-hard members and management always is this is what the New Civilization Network is about: a wild west town with shoot-outs as model negotiation techniques. That was back when there were a lot of participating members in this public area, but those days are gone...along with the members who got sick of it. There were only 2 or 3 flamers in here then, and they're still here. They won. So I realize there's nothing to be done...and I just hope my 16-year-old daughter or some students or my superintendent don't Google me up and come in to read this kind of language. Fortunately my daughter has met Mr. Quintanilla, and admires him as much as the rest of my family...and everyone who has met him personally. Anyway, stopping the pain in NCN is hopeless Mortimer, but thanks for your humane concern. Hopefully no one will question your sexual prowess over it.

I've been hearing about this huge mass of floating plastic in the Pacific lately Vibe, and I've been looking for any pictures of it. The LA Times did a big feature on it a couple years ago {link:http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-me-ocean2aug02%2C0%2C5594900.story?track=mostviewed-homepage} but there are no photos. Does anyone have a satellite view or something?

I wasn't able to get to jazzoLOG yesterday, as the main feature of OU's Earth Week Monday was 2 presentations by Erik Reece, author of the book Lost Mountain, about strip mining in Appalachia. I've mentioned him a couple times here, and have been wanting to meet him...since he teaches at the University of Kentucky, not far from here. That happened at a forum lunch yesterday, and went on until late last night. I'll try to get a summary together real soon but in the meantime, here's an editorial he wrote Sunday for his hometown paper~~~

Considering the facts about coal
Going by the book tells part of story
Erik Reece • Special to The Courier-Journal • April 13, 2008

Last week, while visiting Eastern Kentucky's Robinson Forest, I sat down beside the state's cleanest stream to ponder a recently published document called Kentucky Coal Facts. Generated by the Kentucky Coal Association and the Kentucky Office of Energy Policy, it makes for some interesting reading.

In the debate between spokespersons for the coal industry and citizens opposed to mountaintop removal strip mining, there exists a relentless, almost comical disagreement over the "facts." What follows, then, are some observations based solely on facts and statistics generated by the coal industry itself.

One of the first things you learn from Kentucky Coal Facts is that our state's bituminous ore is shipped to 23 other states and is also shipped overseas. A significant amount of it goes to states like Texas, Minnesota and Pennsylvania, states so rich in wind that they shouldn't have to import a pound of coal. The industry takes apparent pride in the notion that Kentucky is the "Saudi Arabia of coal." But the Saudi royalty has grown rich on their fossil fuel, while the mountains of Kentucky remain one of the poorest places in the United States. The profits from coal leave the state almost as quickly as the coal itself.

Another fact: The production of coal is in decline and has been in decline for the last 40 years. So has employment. In Eastern Kentucky, coal jobs have been cut by 60 percent, due mostly to the mechanization of the industry through strip mining. In 2004, there were only 4,901 surface mining jobs in the region -- 227 per county. Coal may have been the economic engine of Kentucky's past, but it isn't the engine of the present (or 30 percent of coalfield residents wouldn't live below the poverty line), and with federal carbon caps on the horizon, it certainly won't support a successful economy in the future.

It is true, as Kentucky Coal Facts states, that we in the commonwealth pay less for our electricity than anyone else in the country. But that low price comes at a huge cost. Economists use the term "externalities" for all of the costs that are not factored into the monetary price of a commodity. In Appalachia, the externalities are as numerous as they are severe: undrinkable water, lung-scorching coal dust, obliterated mountaintops, the fatal effects of illegally overloaded coal trucks and disappearing wildlife.

The coal industry can claim that a strip mine sprayed with hydroseed is "wildlife habitat," but it isn't the natural habitat of any species native to the mountains of Kentucky. Furthermore, it's hard to understand how a grassland monoculture is any kind of wildlife habitat at all, unless the rare Eastern Kentucky golfer now constitutes wildlife.

Coal operators in Kentucky have to put up bond money before they start mining, money that will pay for reclamation if the company refuses to do so. As of 2005, according to Kentucky Coal Facts, there are 8,502 outstanding bonds valued at $779.9 million. "The bonds assure timely and successful reclamation," states the document. Really? Then why are over 8,000 mine sites sitting unreclaimed? Why is close to a billion dollars in bond money outstanding? This is one of the industry's best-kept secrets: 2.8 million acres of strip mined land have never been reclaimed in any fashion.

Still, for all of the statistical candor in Kentucky Coal Facts, it must be said that what isn't included remains as significant as what is. In the "Air Quality/By-Products" chapter, for instance, the document points out that sulfur dioxide emissions have decreased by over 50 percent since 1976. But it makes no mention of carbon dioxide, the leading source of our global climate crisis, and mercury, which threatens 630,000 newborns every year in the U.S. Coal accounts for 40 percent of air-borne mercury every year.

This is one of the gravest externalities of burning coal; it is morally hard to fathom why this industry would knowingly cause irreparable neurological damage to the unborn. As for global warming, our affluent country is its leading cause, but researchers predict that the world's poorest countries will suffer the brunt of it through droughts, flooding, famine and disease. Another moral dilemma for a country that often claims to follow the teachings of a Mediterranean street preacher whose Sermon on the Mount was a unambiguous charge to care for the world's poor.

But on a local, statewide level, perhaps the real take-away from Kentucky Coal Facts is this: Though the third-largest coal producing state in the country, Kentucky only produces 10 percent of the nation's coal (most of it comes from Wyoming's Powder River Basin). What's more, strip-mined coal from Eastern Kentucky only accounts for 4 percent of the nation's coal.

How easy, then, would it be to reduce the country's need for coal from the country's most biologically diverse ecosystem and thus end mountaintop removal? Try replacing a few lightbulbs with energy-saving ones. Seriously, on a house-to-house level, that is all it would take.

Of course, to halt global warming, we Americans will need to make far more important changes. But stopping mountaintop removal, the most violent environmental practice in this country, requires next to nothing on the level of consumption.

On the level of politics, it may require a great deal more. In his March 14 speech at the state capital, Wendell Berry warned that it might even demand nonviolent civil disobedience. Consumption is easy; citizenship is not. Over the last eight years, corporations and their lobbyists have taken over the very agencies that were created to regulate their greed and lawlessness. To reclaim our democracy -- at least a government worthy of that name -- will require a great deal of effort and creativity.

But what choice do we have?

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080413/OPINION04/804130426

In case you think coal is yesterday's news, here's a fight going on in Los Angeles yesterday~~~

{link:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-coalwars14apr14,1,1861789.story}  



16 Apr 2008 @ 23:48 by a-d : Three of biggest
FLAMERS are gone!.... and fourth (a slightly smaller one) are all gone... Some of the OLDEST Flamers are still here, like you said...and then maself... a newbie -compared to the time the other ones have been here... and never learned better manners! I maself still have some time on my side to do the learning thing...but some of the Oldies are sooooo abrasive AND MIS Information oriented; really they are obviously PAID THUGS!!! ... so I don't know if putting down all one's "word-weapons" is such a good idea!... Those THUGS need to hear the truth about the LIES they are putting out here! And quite frankly; whi is it better to be a crook (you know "whom") I'm talking about and 'allowed' to LIE through one's teeth here than it is to defend TRUTH and DECENCY TOWARDS ALL IFE?????....
and ,no it isn't vax, who is the biggest danger/destroyer here on NCN!... though rough he might be.... I admit!.... but at least he sticks to truth about things! and don't feign innosence when caught red-handed!... NCN...is such a misleading NAME for this site!... How many times do I have to say this??? When will Ming listen to my claims????
Hard to leave, when loving so many (guys like yourslef!...) who still every once in while stop by.... though less & less.... like ma self....A-d : )  



17 Apr 2008 @ 04:28 by Vibe @76.173.37.120 : who is a paid thug?
Gad, this place still harbors lunies and has become more boring than any other other place on the internet. It hasn't been a new civ for a very long time, if it ever was.  


17 Apr 2008 @ 10:00 by jazzolog : OK Folks, Back To The Flowers
Yes, I too like to reminisce about all the blood and thunder at this site, through whose In and Out doors have passed some of the sweetest and most fascinating men and women one could meet on the Net. But back to the business at hand---and I must get an entry together about Jeff Goodell, whose presentation on Big Coal I got to hear last night. The May issue of Harper's is on the stand, and if you don't want to wait a month to read Wendell Berry's new essay online you'll have to go buy it. Here's a piece of it~~~

Faustian economics: Hell hath no limits
Wendell Berry, Harpers

The general reaction to the apparent end of the era of cheap fossil fuel, as to other readily forseeable curtailments, has been to delay any sort of reckoning. The strategies of delay have been a sort of willed oblivion, or visions of large profits to the manufacturers of such "biofuels" as ethanol from corn or switchgrass, or the familiar unscientific faith that "science will find an answer." The dominant response, in short, is a dogged belief that what we call the American Way of Life will prove somehow indestructible. We will keep on consuming, spending, wasting, and driving, as before, at any cost to anything and everybody but ourselves.

... Our national faith so far has been: "There's always more." Our true religion is a sort of autistic industrialism. People of intelligence and ability seem now to be genuinely embarrassed by any solution to any problem that does not involve high technology, a great expenditure of energy, or a big machine.

... It is this economy of community destruction that, wittingly or unwittingly, most scientists and technicians have served for the past two hundred years. These scientists and technicians have justified themselves by the proposition that they are the vanguard of progress, enlarging human knowledge and power, and thus they have romanticized both themselves and the predatory enterprises that they have served.

As a consequence, our great need now is for sciences and technologies of limits, of domesticity, of what Wes Jackson of the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, has called "homecoming." These would be specifically human sciences and technologies, working, as the best humans have always worked, within self-imposed limits. The limits would be the accepted contexts of places, communities, and neighborhoods, both natural and human.

... perhaps our most serious cultural loss in recent centuries is the knowledge that some things, though limited, are inexhaustible. For example, an ecosystem, even that of a working forest or farm, so long as it remains ecologically intact, is inexhaustible. A small place, as I know from my own experience, can provide opportunities of work and learning, and a fund of beauty, solace, and pleasure -- in addition to its difficulties -- that cannot be exhausted in a lifetime or in generations.

... And so, in confronting the phenomenon of "peak oil," we are really confronting the end of our customary delusion of "more." Whichever way we turn, from now on, we are going to find a limit beyond which there will be no more. To hit these limits at top speed is not a rational choice. To start slowing down, with the idea of avoiding catastrophe, is a rational choice, and a viable one if we can recover the necessary political sanity. Of course it makes sense to consider alternative energy sources, provided they make sense. But we will have to re-examine the economic structures of our lives, and conform them to the tolerances and limits of our earthly places. Where there is no more, our one choice is to make the most and the best of what we have. (END)

(May 2008 issue)
Long article (eight pages) from poet, essayist and farmer Wendell Berry, whose writings have served as a moral compass for generations of Americans. His "Long Legged House" made me decide to stop wandering and settle in one place, and his "Unsettling of America" was the first glimmer I had of the problems of modern agriculture. The article is behind a paywall. -BA
http://www.energybulletin.net/42840.html  



17 Apr 2008 @ 15:22 by jazzolog : Erik Reece At Ohio University
At last I had the chance to meet this guy, a nature writer in the tradition of Thoreau and Wendell Berry, who is his mentor. The devastation of the mountains is his theme, and believe me you have no idea how widespread the destruction is. My new friend, Stephanie Laird, tells it today in our Athens News~~~

http://www.athensnews.com/media/images/photo-photograph-43.jpg

Earth Week speaker decries mountaintop removal
By Stephanie Laird
Athens NEWS Campus Reporter
April 17, 2008

Earth Week 2008 keynote speaker Erik Reece, author of “Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness,” discussed the devastation that mountaintop-removal coal-mining has on the environment and nearby communities with a panel of activists Monday evening.

“They blast off everything that’s not coal,” explained Reece, a native Kentuckian who teaches at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

Mountaintop removal, he said, is a radical and destructive coal mining practice executed throughout Appalachia by coal companies because they realized blowing the top off mountains is the fastest and cheapest way to mine coal. During the process, he added, the “overburden” – the rocks, topsoil and trees concealing the seams of coal – are dumped into the downslope valleys and streams as “fill material.”

The Clean Water Protection Act, a bill currently pending in Congress, will redefine “fill material” to not include mining “waste” under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. Reece said the redefinition will revert the law to what it was before the Bush administration changed it in 2002.

In West Virginia, where the mining practice is used extensively, 1,000 miles of streams have been buried by mountaintop-removal valley fills, according to panelist Julian Martin, vice president for state affairs for the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy. He is also vice-chair of the Kanawha State Forest Foundation and board member of the West Virginia History Association.

According to Reece, 95 percent of the streams surrounding mine sites have been degraded or are dead due to coal-mining practices. Acid-mine drainage, another mining side effect, has contaminated many streams in areas with mining operations (including Athens County, though mountaintop removal isn’t used here). In addition to water resource depletion, mountaintop removal is “occurring in one of the most biologically diverse landscapes in North America, which is incredibly distressing,” said Reece.

He noted that once the trees have been shaved off and burned from the face of the mountain and deposited in the neighboring valley, there’s nothing left to hold the water back. Consequently, flash floods can wash out an entire community downstream from a mountaintop-removal operation, said Reece. Even worse, he continued, communities near coal-sludge impoundments – areas constructed by coal companies to hold the liquid waste known as sludge or slurry produced from washing and processing coal –risk being drowned by this carcinogenic cocktail if a dam fails.

This potential disaster became all too real for Kentuckians when an impoundment owned by Massey Energy Company released 300 million gallons of viscous sludge in 2000, resulting in the flooding of homes, gardens and the contamination of 75 miles of waterways. While modern impoundments are less likely to falter, they are much larger and more numerous, according to the Sludge Safety Project.

While disasters of this magnitude bring the controversial mountaintop-removal issue into the spotlight, the proliferation of coal dust in communities near mining operations is a less sensational but still significant side effect.

Reece maintained that the coal dust coating Appalachian communities in mining regions results in increased cases of bronchitis. Additionally, “60,000 newborns in our country are at risk because females have mercury in their breast milk,” he said, adding that coal-fired power plants are the leading cause of increased mercury levels in the environment.

“Distance negates responsibility,” said Reece. “We need to take responsibility to negate the difference.” Distance is an issue in mountaintop removal because the people who are impacted are not the people with the power to halt the destruction of the Appalachian mountains.

The ramifications of mountaintop-removal mining are viewed as “externalities” to the people in charge, said Reece, since they are not factoring in the cracked foundations that blasting incurs, losses due to flooding, the decrease in the songbird population, or the coal dust that clouds communities in the vicinity of mountaintop-removal operations.

“The love of money is the root of all evil,” declared Reece. “The coal industry is an interesting demonstration of this,” he added, noting that it regularly contributes millions of dollars to politicians to protect their mineral investments and irresponsible methods.

“Corporations are acting in ways that are fundamentally immoral,” said Reece. “The love of money has corrupted these corporations, which don’t have a moral compass because they’re not an individual; they’re not a real person.”

According to Reece, citizens need to think about themselves as members of the land community so they can begin making the fundamental changes necessary to live sustainably into the 21st century.

Supporters of mountaintop-removal mining, including the coal industry and some economic development officials, argue that it has helped maintain a crucial industry in depressed regions of Appalachia, with jobs and economic development. They cite examples where such mining resulted in rare flat sites for development in otherwise mountainous areas, and have even argued that the resulting habitat can be good for wildlife.

IN HIS DEBUT BOOK, REECE chronicles a mountaintop-removal project at “Lost Mountain” that he witnessed over the course of a year in Kentucky. Month by month he watched the once-majestic mountain vanish, along with the animals and vegetation that formerly called it home.

Reece also ties in the social, class and economic issues associated with this explosive method of coal mining, including testaments from local residents impacted by mountaintop removal and the governmental and corporate shortcomings that permit its continuation.

The panel of activists joining Reece Monday evening included: Julian Martin, a man who was witnessed the devastation of mountaintop removal in his own backyard since his youth; Bill Price, Sierra Club environmental justice coordinator and Clean Water Protection Act lobbyist, whose home and community in West Virginia was flooded in 2001 due to mountaintop removal; and Ohio Student Environmental Coalition member Mattie Reitman.

In relation to the environmental justice theme of Earth Week 2008, Price said the regions of the country producing coal can be overlaid onto areas with the highest poverty rates.

“If the people of Appalachia got the money from the coal mined from the region, we would be one of the richest parts of the country,” he said.

In addition, mountaintop removal not only depletes the environmental quality and resources of a region, he said, it hampers economic development opportunities, since businesses don’t want to locate in regions where you can’t even drink the water.

For information on additional Earth Week 2008 events visit: www.facilities.ohiou.edu/conservation/earthweek.htm

http://www.athensnews.com/news/campusnews/2008/apr/17/earth-week-speaker-decries-mountaintop-removal/  



17 Apr 2008 @ 16:41 by Quinty @72.195.137.102 : Your remarks, Jazzo
remind me of some wooded roads in California. You drive along and sense the isolation, the silence, the encroach of the forest. Problem is, the woods are only three or four trees deep. The appearance of the forest is only that: the appearance. From the road you would never be able to tell the woods had been cut down, decimated.

Now it may only be sentimental, and I may lack a hard headed business sence, forgetting the importance of jobs, jobs, jobs, but somehow that seems to me profoundly sad.

I like Wendell Berry too. I'll read what he has to say.....  



17 Apr 2008 @ 16:59 by Quinty @72.195.137.102 : Maybe
I should have said ten or twenty trees deep. Through three or four you would be able to see the light on the other side.

I suppose that allowing the outward husk of a forest to remain causes less complaint. No tourists passing by will remark upon the waste. Something like one or two percent of the old growth forests still remain in California. Yet the loggers still want more.

Who was it who said, "If you've seen one redwood you've seen them all?" Was that Ronald Reagan? James Watt? I've forgotten.

I suppose the execs at Massey Energy feel sorry about all the waste and filth. But dollars are dollars and you have to be hard headed in this world. Anyway, there always more mountains. And more people. In time, I suppose, the execs learn how to think this way, put it out of mind. Convince themselves it's for the greater good, or their families. Or - why not? - just themselves.  



17 Apr 2008 @ 17:51 by jazzolog : Proud Of Our Toxic
To the contrary, at first Massey tried to sell us the idea the toxic sludge was good for the streams. It was so hot it sizzled the crap already in there from hillbilly outhouses. I kid you not.

http://www.ohvec.org/galleries/mountaintop_removal/007/21_tn.jpg

The devastation is even worse than the 20 trees to hide the housing developments behind. Jeff Goodell showed us a Google Earth shot of West Virginia, with all the strip mines highlighted in red. It appeared to be about a third of the entire state. Because they are in the mountains, nobody has known how vast it is...until now. And of course coal creates twice the carbon when it's burned than does anything else.

http://myspace-460.vo.llnwd.net/00773/06/41/773171460_l.jpg  



17 Apr 2008 @ 18:36 by Quinty @72.195.137.102 : Hmmmmm,
maybe that's the kind of stuff Big Agri' interests had in mind when they tried, some years ago, to add industrial sludge to the list of acceptable "organic" soils?  


24 Apr 2008 @ 09:50 by jazzolog : The US Bank Account
While James Hansen writes again, at Yale Global last week, that the clock is running out http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=10657 , the only clock George Bush is interested in is how much time he has to answer questions on Deal Or No Deal http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/22/georgebush.usa . Hahaha, watta guy! Maybe he needs the money.

But have you checked your bankbook lately? Do you still have a bankbook or did you bury all the cash in the backyard?

Let's say there are 172 people in your acquaintance who have bank accounts. If you were to compare the state and condition of your account with all those other people and make a list of those who have funds on hand and those who are in the hole, where do you think you would be on the list?

You may not be aware of this but the US Central Intelligence Agency puts out a World Factbook. It's an annual publication and, as such books go, is a very good one. The CIA updates the version that's online, which you can download I guess if you want to. {link:https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html}
If you go to that link, you'll notice one of the features is called Rank Order Pages. Nations are ranked according to this and that. Once there {link:https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/docs/rankorderguide.html} , you'll find a whole index of ways the Agency ranks them. One of those ways, under Economy, is Current Account Balance.
Now, without peeking, among the 173 countries, for which such information is available, where do you think the United States might be, according to the latest update on April 15th---heh heh tax day?

Here's the answer~~~

{link:https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2187rank.html}  



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