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Wednesday, April 30
"The Final Empire," by Wm. H. Kötke. Chap. 2: THE END OF CIVILIZATION
by
ronjon
on April 30, 2008 02:00AM (PDT)
This is Chapter 2 of SCIY Editor Wm. H. Kötke's recently reprinted "Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future. It's so relevant to SCIY's core concerns that, with William's full support and permission, we're going to be serializing all 20 chapters here on SCIY (at an average rate of a chapter per week). -- To see the first chapter (including the Title Pages, Acknowledgements, Introduction & Table of Contents), go to Chapter 1: Pattern of the Crisis. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I have,
~ ronjon more »
Tuesday, April 29
James Howard Kunstler: April 28, 2008 - A Collective Psychic Bubble
by
ronjon
on April 29, 2008 04:00PM (PDT)
...This has been a pretty remarkable month, actually, with all the problems of "The Long Emergency" accelerating impressively. Oil is now testing the $120 mark, the airline industry is imploding (largely over fuel costs), the housing scene has reached a degree of collapse unseen since the 1930s, food shortages have strayed out of the Third World and begun to affect Japan and the USA, bats are dying of a mysterious disease in the Northeast, and the Arctic sea ice is shrinking away to nothing.
We're in a strange collective psychic bubble. We'd like to forget about all these troubling rumors of hardship and bad weather and just get on with the daily task of making a living and paying for stuff and enjoying our customary entertainments. The comforting ceremonies of everyday life seem to continue. The freeways are still full of cars. Nancy Grace comes on TV dependably at 8 p.m. and is there deploring the latest pervert arrest. The baseball season has ramped up and the teams are criss-crossing the nation in their chartered airplanes. The stock market is actually going up -- what's wrong with that?
But there's an equally eerie vibe out there that things are seriously out-of-whack. We're on the edge of something. We're at the entrance of a dark passage where some of the ceremonies of daily life meet resistance. You go to the WalMart and five of your six credit cards are refused. Uh oh. It begins to dawn on you that you're spending a quarter of your take-home pay filling up the gas-tank every week. There's no dial tone when you pick up the telephone. How could all the supermarkets in town be out of rice? The local hospital just declared bankruptcy. The neighbors down the street auctioned off all their furniture in the driveway last week. Why does the cat pick up so many ticks these days? ... more »
Thursday, April 24
Carbon Dioxide & Methane Rise Sharply In 2007
by
ronjon
on April 24, 2008 12:04PM (PDT)
Last year [2007] alone global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the primary driver of global climate change, increased by 0.6 percent, or 19 billion tons... Additionally methane rose by 27 million tons after nearly a decade with little or no increase. -- Methane is 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but there’s far less of it in the atmosphere—about 1,800 parts per billion. When related climate affects are taken into account, methane’s overall climate impact is nearly half that of carbon dioxide.
Rapidly growing industrialization in Asia and rising wetland emissions in the Arctic and tropics are the most likely causes of the recent methane increase. said scientist Ed Dlugokencky from NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory. -- ”We’re on the lookout for the first sign of a methane release from thawing Arctic permafrost,” said Dlugokencky. “It’s too soon to tell whether last year’s spike in emissions includes the start of such a trend.”
Permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, contains vast stores of carbon. Scientists are concerned that as the Arctic continues to warm and permafrost thaws, carbon could seep into the atmosphere in the form of methane, possibly fueling a cycle of carbon release and temperature rise. ... more »
Wednesday, April 23
Recipes for Disaster (NYT Sunday Book Review)
by
ronjon
on April 23, 2008 02:00AM (PDT)
...In light of the present [economic] crisis..., however, two eco-millenarian novels — an old one called “Ecotopia,” by Ernest Callenbach, and a new one, WORLD MADE BY HAND (Atlantic Monthly, $24), by James Howard Kunstler — are worth a look...
Literary utopias tend to emerge when an appropriate niche opens up. The niche that suited “Ecotopia” in the early 1970s and the one that now accommodates “World Made by Hand” have certain similarities. Shortages and unrest in the Middle East foreshadow the end of oil. A brewing recession gives rise to doubts about our economic fundamentals. An unpopular president wages an unpopular war. And across the country, a growing eco-consciousness raises hope that a different system might replace classic, marauding American economic progress. ... more »
"The Final Empire," by Wm. H. Kötke. Chap. 1: PATTERN OF THE CRISIS
by
ronjon
on April 23, 2008 01:07AM (PDT)
This is Chapter 1 of SCIY Editor Wm. H. Kötke's recently reprinted "Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future. It's so relevant to SCIY's core concerns that, with William's permission, we're going to be serializing all 20 chapters here on SCIY (at an average rate of a chapter per week). The reprinting has been receiving excellent reviews: Carolyn Baker in her national daily web site says: "Stunning" "A Masterpiece." "It was thirteen years ahead of its time. Now it is even more relevant. The book that explains the cultural basis of the present planetary crisis. William Kotke has brilliantly articulated what I would not only describe as an ‘encyclopedia of collapse’ but has skillfully depicted a vision of possibility imbedded within the core of apocalypse." A review at Amazon.Com said: "This is an incredibly well documented and prophetic book. Prophetic in the sense that when I first read it over ten years ago, I was skeptical of many predictions. They have all turned out to come true. This book is indigenous and inspiring in the sense that it offers practical earth friendly strategies that affirm the possibility that man is part OF nature, not apart FROM it. Well written! Real history and facts, vitally relevant, and hence empowering! ..."
This first installment includes the Title Pages, Acknowledgements, Introduction, Table of Contents, and Chapter 1 (of 20): Pattern of the Crisis. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I have, ~ ronjon more »
Tuesday, April 22
Anatomy of an Economic Collapse (NYT Sunday Book Review)
by
ronjon
on April 22, 2008 11:19AM (PDT)
...In his brief but brilliant book, “The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash,” [Charles R.] Morris describes how we got into the mess we are in, with bankers making loans that they expected to sell to investors through ever more complex securities...
One of the most important aspects of the financial architecture that is now collapsing was the way it allowed investors to believe they could make perfectly safe investments when they financed very risky loans. Or, as Morris puts it, “Highly rated bonds magically materialize out of a witches’ soup of very smoky stuff.” He adds, “Very big, very complex, very opaque structures built on extremely rickety foundations are a recipe for collapse.”
The collapse is now under way. In recent years Wall Street profits were built on leverage and on taking risks that were obscure both to regulators and even to the top managements of the banks themselves. Every three months now, we see banks disclosing huge losses from risks that they had never admitted they were taking.
No one — not investors, not managers, not regulators — is sure when this process will end. And that uncertainty has created a credit freeze, with lenders reluctant to lend both because they do not know whom they can trust and because they fear they may need the money to cover losses that are yet to materialize. As the recession gathers steam, there are likely to be more corporate failures than there need to be, because credit has gone from virtually free to all but unavailable. ... more »
Saturday, April 19
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Adults Recognition and Management
by
rakesh
on April 19, 2008 04:04PM (PDT)
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is considered the most common psychiatric disorder experienced during childhood. Some references indicate an incidence as high as 10% of American school-age children. Most references, however, place the incidence in this age group at around 2%–5%. Approximately 80% of children with ADHD continue to have symptoms of the condition as adolescents, and more than 60% of children experience symptoms as adults. If these estimates are correct, between 2 and 5 million adults who had ADHD as a child continue to be affected by the condition. Many adults with ADHD have not been diagnosed as such. more »
Friday, April 18
• "The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future," by SCIY Editor Wm. H. Kotke
by
ronjon
on April 18, 2008 01:51PM (PDT)
I just received an email from SCIY Editor Wm. H. Kotke announcing the publication of the first reprint of his underground classic: "The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future," first published in 1993. I just downloaded the E-book version (for just $6.95) and after a quick scan through its 600+ pages, I'm convinced this is a significant read for those SCIY readers concerned about Earth's sustainability crisis. As an Amazon reviewer said:
"This is an incredibly well documented and prophetic book. Prophetic in the sense that when I first read it over ten years ago, I was skeptical of many predictions. They have all turned out to come true. This book is indigenous and inspiring in the sense that it offers practical earth friendly strategies that affirm the possibility that man is part OF nature, not apart FROM it. Well written! Real history and facts, vitally relevant, and hence empowering! Good medicine for all earthlings. A powerful gift! Thanks Bill!" ... more »
Wednesday, April 16
Shift Scenario: Averting Extinction, by Jim Fournier
by
ronjon
on April 16, 2008 12:43AM (PDT)
It may be possible for the global system to undergo a change in state, a fundamental shift from one of increasingly intractable interrelated crises to one characterized by mutually reinforcing synergetic solutions.
The global situation has become like a Gordian knot wherein it appears that all attempts to solve any one crisis in isolation only makes others worse. We face myriad crises, all aspects of an unprecedented breakdown in many global systems that is already coming to a head and will become acute within a decade or less. Spiraling debt, the impending end of abundant oil, global warming, overpopulation, mass extinction and a general acceleration of change verging on chaotic instability can all be seen as part of a pattern of converging indicators at a unique moment in history. Many of these trends (enumerated in more detail below) are still accelerating and are apparently characterized by logarithmic curves...
However, there is another plausible scenario. At a critical point, key trend lines could shift from curving one way, representing ever accelerating but increasingly unstable change, and cross over to begin to curve the other way, representing deceleration toward a state of greater stability. Mathematically, this phenomenon would be described as an S-curve; the point where the curvature changes from facing one way to facing the other is called the "point of inflection". ... more »
Friday, April 11
Hybrid power systems for rural Gujarat [and Auroville]
by
ronjon
on April 11, 2008 02:00AM (PDT)
...The Gujarat Energy Development Agency (GEDA) has already received expression of interest from 12 players, which include Supernova, Unitron Energy, Auroville and Vistar Electronics.
The capacity of these aero-generators is 2 Kwh to 10 Kwh and is in the ratio of 60:40, i.e., if the total capacity is 10 Kwh, 6 kwh will be generated by wind while 4 kwh by solar energy. -- These aero generators can be installed on rooftops and they work on solar energy during daytime and on wind at night. ... more »
Wednesday, April 9
Supercooled Ice Breakthrough in Michigan
by
ronjon
on April 9, 2008 02:22PM (PDT)
I recently received an email from my wife's sister, who was forwarded the remarkable images below by a friend living in Michigan. I'm of course wondering if this might be yet another unanticipated effect of global climate change?
Her friend made the following comment:
"Michigan has had the coldest winter in decades. Water expands to freeze, and at Macinaw City the water in Lake Huron below the surface ice was supercooled. It expanded to break through the surface ice and froze into this incredible wave. -- I've seen pictures of this wave phenomena in Antarctica, but in Michigan? Yes, it's been quite a winter..."
 more »
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