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Report Says Climate Change Mainly Caused by the Sun

psircles — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:46:59 GMT

US ARMY: Report Says Climate Change Mainly Caused by the Sun
By Nicola Scafetta and Bruce J. West
Jun 6, 2008 - 2:29:08 PM

In the March, 2008 issue of Physics Today, Dr. Bruce West, the chief scientist of the Army Research Office's mathematical and information science directorate, wrote that the Sun's turbulent dynamics are linked with the Earth's complex ecosystem. "The Sun could account for as much as 70 percent of the increase in Earth's average temperature."

Equation: Sunspots => Solar Flares => Magnetic Field Shift => Shifting Ocean and Jet Stream Currents => Extreme Weather and Human Disruption (Mitch Battros)

The causes of global warming--the increase of approximately 0.8±0.1 °C in the average global temperature near Earth's surface since 1900--are not as apparent as some recent scientific publications and the popular media indicate. We contend that the changes in Earth's average surface temperature are directly linked to two distinctly different aspects of the Sun's dynamics: the short-term statistical fluctuations in the Sun's irradiance and the longer-term solar cycles. This argument for directly linking the Sun's dynamics to the response of Earth's climate is based on our research and augments the interpretation of the causes of global warming presented in the United Nations 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.1

The most debated issue in contemporary science is the cause or causes of global warming, with the popular media contending that the issue has been resolved and that the majority of scientists concur. The "majority opinion" is based on the analysis of global warming done using large-scale computer codes that incorporate all identified physical and chemical mechanisms into global circulation models (GCMs) in an attempt to recreate and understand the variability in Earth's average temperature. The IPCC report1 concludes that the contribution of solar variability to global warming is negligible, to a certainty of 95%. It is reported that the "majority" believes the average warming observed since the beginning of the industrial era is due to the increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

Modeling TSI variability

Earth's atmosphere, landmasses, and oceans absorb and redistribute the total solar irradiance (TSI) by means of coupled nonlinear hydrothermal, geochemical, and radiative dynamic processes that produce Earth's globally averaged temperature at a given time. Versions of those physical mechanisms are included in the GCMs, but what is not addressed in the simulations are the statistics of the time series. Those series consist of the monthly values of temperature anomalies. The statistical variability in Earth's average temperature is interpreted as noise; the temperature fluctuations are thought to contain no useful information and are consequently smoothed to emphasize the presumably more important long-time changes in the average global temperature, typically on the order of years.

According to the central limit theorem, the statistics of the fluctuations in such large-dimensional networks ought to be Gaussian.2 The fact that they are not remains unexplained. The non-Gaussian behavior prompted us to study temperature fluctuations as a problem in nonequilibrium statistical physics wherein statistical fluctuations often provide useful information about the transport properties of complex phenomena. An example would be the fluctuation– dissipation theorem, in which the response of a network to a perturbation is determined by the network's unperturbed autocorrelation function.

The variations in TSI are indicative of the Sun's turbulent dynamics, as evidenced by changes in the number, duration, and intensity of solar flares and sunspots, and by the intermittency in the time intervals between dark spots and bright faculae. That time variation in TSI induces similar changes in Earth's average temperature and produces trends that move the global temperature up and down for tens or even hundreds of years. Our conclusions depart from those of the GCM simulations. We maintain that the variations in Earth's temperature are not noise, but contain substantial information about the source of variability, in particular the variations in TSI. Establishing this direct connection between the complex dynamics of the Sun and Earth requires a new kind of linking--one associated with the transfer of information between complex networks, even when the linking is extremely weak, as it is in the Sun–Earth network.

We showed that the stochastic properties of the average global temperature are linked to the statistics of TSI.2 It is the linking of the complexity of Earth to the complexity of the Sun that forces Earth's temperature anomalies to adopt the TSI statistics. Consequently, both the fluctuations in TSI, using the solar flare time series as a surrogate, and Earth's average temperature time series are observed to have inverse power-law statistical distributions. Specifically, if t is the time between events, where an event is a solar flare or a fluctuation in Earth's temperature, the distribution of time intervals between events P(t) is an inverse power law; that is, P(t) ≈ A/tα, where A is a normalization constant. The inverse power-law index α turns out to be the same for both the solar flare and temperature anomaly time series, even though the cross-correlation of the two vanishes except at the lowest frequencies, where quasi-periodic solar cycles dominate the dynamics.

The scaling of the statistical distribution of the TSI time series was tested by randomly changing the order of the data points. If the time series were internally correlated, the resulting distribution would have changed from the original, but that did not happen. The invariance of the distribution under shuffling indicates that the statistics of the time series is non-Poisson and renewal--meaning that with the generation of each new event, the process is renewed. The same was determined to be true of the global temperature time series.

Complexity matching

The statistics of solar flares, which we used as a surrogate for the fluctuations in TSI, are described by a non-Gaussian distribution. The behavior of such limit distributions requires a generalization of the central limit theorem to the case in which the second moment of the variate diverges. Such processes were studied by Paul Lévy before World War II, and now bear his name. The solar flare statistics were shown to be describable by such a Lévy distribution and we assumed that intermittent solar flares perturb the intrinsic fluctuations in Earth's average temperature. The end result of this perturbation is that the statistics of the temperature anomalies inherit the statistical structure that was evident in the intermittency of the solar flare data.2 The inverse power-law index α for solar flares was determined to be 2.14, whereas α for the air temperature was 2.11 globally, 2.20 for the Northern Hemisphere, 2.09 for the Southern Hemisphere, 2.21 over land, and 2.06 over the ocean. The near equivalence in indices occurs because of a newly identified phenomenon, the complexity matching effect,3 described below, and suggests the presence of a subtle but persistent solar signature in climate fluctuations on short time scales. Note that this climate response to complexity is separate and distinct from the response to solar cycles.

Thus, the Sun's influence on Earth's temperature is subtle because it is not just an energy transport process but also an information transfer. According to linear response theory in statistical physics, a network S responds to a perturbation P by means of a linear transfer equation, whose kernel, the response function, is determined by the fluctuation–dissipation theorem given that the perturbation is sufficiently weak. When S and P are non-Poisson renewal processes, the response of S is maximal when the complexity of the two networks, as measured by the inverse power-law indices, is matched.3 For the Sun–Earth one-way linking, S is the Earth and P is the Sun. The complexity-matching effect in the Sun–Earth network is evident in the equality of the inverse power-law indices.

Solar cycles

Incorporating the influence of solar cycles into this thermodynamically closed climate modeling strategy reveals coordinated variability over even longer time scales. Recent heuristic studies indicate that the climate time response parameter τ, analogous to the Onsager relaxation time in statistical physics, might be 5–10 years.4,5 By using a climate time response τ of 7.5 years and the phenomenological 0.1 °C amplitude of the 11-year solar cycle (see reference 1, page 674, for details) as constraints on a simple two-parameter model in the tradition of the earliest climate models, we recently showed that it is possible to reconstruct a phenomenological solar signature (PSS) of climate for the last four centuries.5 In the figure, the interval from 1950 to 2010 is displayed with two such PSS reconstructions derived from two alternative TSI inputs. The figure shows excellent agreement between the 11-year PSS cycles and the cycles observed in the smoothed average global temperature data; a 22-year cycle component in the temperature also matches the 22-year PSS cycle very well. In particular, since 2002 the temperature data present a global cooling, not a warming! This cooling seems to have been induced by decreased solar activity from the 2001 maximum to the 2007 minimum as depicted in two distinct TSI reconstructions.

Thus the average global temperature record presents secular patterns of 22- and 11-year cycles and a short timescale fluctuation signature (with apparent inverse power-law statistics), both of which appear to be induced by solar dynamics. The same patterns are poorly reproduced by present-day GCMs and are dismissively interpreted as internal variability (noise) of climate. The nonequilibrium thermodynamic models we used suggest that the Sun is influencing climate significantly more than the IPCC report claims. If climate is as sensitive to solar changes as the above phenomenological findings suggest, the current anthropogenic contribution to global warming is significantly overestimated. We estimate that the Sun could account for as much as 69% of the increase in Earth's average temperature, depending on the TSI reconstruction used. Furthermore, if the Sun does cool off, as some solar forecasts predict will happen over the next few decades, that cooling could stabilize Earth's climate and avoid the catastrophic consequences predicted in the IPCC report.

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 30 replies

Gaia Seakayaking Moment

bearsky — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:55:37 GMT

I put in at a public launch off of the eastern shore of Maryland just south of Annapolis, home of The Naval Academy, about a half hour from dawn. The Chesapeake Bay was almost its widest here and I intended to paddle east three or so miles into the bay and then cruise a little before heading back. My main idea was just to be a good ways out from land when the sun came up thru the water that would be before me, the far shore invisible in the fog especially from such a low vantage point of a Sea kayak. It just seemed that it would be really cool to be paddling straight into the dawn and this was the easiest way to do it and closest to my house in Virginia.
The fog turned out to be much thicker than off shore and after a while I could see only about 50 feet or so into this fog. The sun rose as a diffused brightening of the enshrouding fog creating the effect of maybe being inside a frosted light bulb. The bay became sloppy with the waves caused from large ships passing out in the deepest channel. It was early February and barely above freezing and I had on full cold water dry suit and gear. Suddenly, I found myself slipping in between a flock of enormous pure white Artic Swans all sleeping out in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, bobbing gently in the waves with their long necks and beaks buried into their white side feathers. I immediately dragged my Inuit wooden paddle as quietly as I could and brought my little boat to a stop. The swans did not wake. It was absolutely the most stunningly beautiful moment of my life as ever so slowly an amazing number of birds materialized out of the fog and just as slowly the dawning light caste them in its ethereal glow.
I backed stroked out very slowly and quietly using deep, slow strokes and all the while I was sobbing like never before in my life and I was sobbing because of how beautiful it was, pure and simple, and I was sobbing sort of silently making very little noise, the birds continuing to sleep as I pulled out of their presence, floating there like pure white ghosts vanishing into the ethereal dawn light. It was just as well the channel couldn’t be too far anyway. The Swans very well may have chosen this exact place as the furthest they could get from land and still be safe from the dangerous shipping channel in the middle of the bay. I back paddled slowly away watching the sleeping swans until their bobbing white forms became invisible on the choppy bay.

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 0 replies

Negative creation

Auton — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:37:56 GMT

We live in a paranoid society. We were convinced that we are creating a world of destruction, decay and annihilation. In the same time we are all disgusted to acknowledge this. We are convinced ("we believe") that we are able to destroy the existing world, but we don't believe that we can create a New World.

There is a whole industry built around this; professional, scientific, religious, occultistic-entertaining fear mongering, an escatological atmosphere like 2000 years ago, when Christ was born.

We are the balance creating species of this Universe. We are responsible for the Order in Cosmos. This is why we build temples, gardens, houses. And it doesn't matter is there are only a dozen people on this planet, who are aware of this. It is enough, if there is only one of us who is awaken. The Universe, after 14 billion years, however, is pointing at you. The Universe is patient and persistent. There are no deadlines.

Eternity will never expire.

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 2 replies

Screw Sustainability

trancedan — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:49:01 GMT

"Sustainability implies a worldview of a kindly and caring nature, a nature that's easily raped by technology, industry, capitalism, and modernism. It implies a nature that will automatically protect rainforests, whales, and endangered species if we greedy modern humans rein in our consumerist lusts. If we get rid of our SUVs and of our industrial factories, this worldview tells us that nature will go back to the greenery and the reliability of some mythic good old days.rnBut that view of nature isn't true. Nature is not the motherly protector. Nature is just the opposite. She tosses us curves and challenges our creativity. The challenge to create is what Mother Nature and her favorite game - evolution - are really all about. Which means we need a major worldview change. ( Source: http://www.scientificblogging.com/howard_bloom/screw_sustainability_and_i_am_here_to_tell_you_why )

"Our goal is not sustainability. It's not to bow and grovel hoping Mother Nature will also freeze in place. Our challenge is to outrun nature by inventing radically new ways to deal with change. We have to be able to raise food in drought. We have to be able to raise a rich bounty of fruits, vegetables, and grain in flood or in a new ice age. If necessary, we have to farm the bacteria that love the deep freeze of the Antarctic, the bacteria that live in rock and the bacteria that thrive in radioactivity.If we want to make nature proud, it's time to ride the whirlwind."

(Source: http://www.scientificblogging.com/howard_bloom/screw_sustainability_and_cheer_up_about_it )

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 33 replies

Natural Intelligence- The earth is alive but how do we as humanity fit into that picture?

Daenin — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:28:40 GMT

The Earth Mother is Alive. And we are her children. Our flesh and our emotions, our memories and our mind and even our subconscious and intuition are connected to the Earth mother who also has these same qualities. I will hint at some of these connections below and how I have come to believe this. Maybe you will find it useful also.
1 For those who know of the wisdom of the "somatic intelligence" that is accessed through kinesiology, muscle testing or body work such as network chiropractic or massage we find a relationship between a governing knowledge of intelligence of the body and its relationship to the subconscious. In network Chiropractic a practitioner can adjust one person in a room full of patients and the others will begin to experience adjustments even though they were not physically adjusted. "Those who go deeply into body work often find this seemingly somewhat mystical connection between the body and the Subconscious. Memories and feelings can arise from body tissues. The musculature seems to be more aware than the mind of what is best for us with measurable tests for allergens and chemical sensitivities, but also for other life decisions.
2 Kabbalists talk about different archetypal energies which are related to the subconscious these are different types of intelligence. The path of Aquarius the connection between Yesod and Netzach is the "Natural intelligence”, and is also the age we moving into. This is an archetype of enhanced intuition and raising of hope through connection to a guiding intelligence in nature.
3 Leonardo DaVinci and other visionaries who are able to conceive of ideas that seem "far ahead of their time" often believed that all the answers to our world problems were to be found in nature. They actually looked to the designs of nature and revered her living intelligence.
4 A deeper understanding of the phrase "The Land and the King are one" is that we as sovereign beings and children of Earth are connected intimately with the earth. Women's moon cycles connect them powerfully to the earth, and they often experience heightened feelings from some "unknown origin". I believe that this is also the subconscious of the self connected to the subconscious of the Land. What memories or repressed emotions stored in the land beneath our feet are being revealed to women during this time?
5 I have definitely felt that certain places, or certain areas of town have "a feeling" to them. I believe that we are influenced by this feeling on an earth subconscious level and we also have the ability to influence these areas with our personal subconscious. When there is great creativity and collaboration and joy in a space then this also is stored in the Earth mothers flesh and subconscious.
6 So I believe that there is a give and take nurturing and challenging relationship between us and the Earth Mother. Much of what we may find challenging may be the stored memories of traumas felt by humans and transferred to the subconscious of the Earth Mother. The Earth Mother as a living being may even respond to this in a similar way to the way humans do.
7 Energy workers find that memories and thought forms clog the flow of healthy Chi from flowing- causing disturbances that eventually become disease and disharmony in the physical organism. Could it be that we also are influencing the Earth's behavior with our unconscious garbage?
8 I have also found that as we awaken to who we really are and see our place in the world as connected, that we can begin consciously to work with the natural intelligence to create memories and a foundation of positive feelings and collaboration and harmony on a subconscious level with the help of the Earth mother.
9 This intelligence can be accessed through a deep understanding of how this intelligence is transmitted and stored. This can be achieved through deep study of Gemstone Energy Medicine, Gemstone Therapy, Breathwork and Qigong Arts.
10 Scientists, Visionary Inventors, Intuitives, Physicists, Mystics, Bodyworkers, Kabbalists, Alchemists, Doctors, Acupuncturists, Researchers, Athletes, and Gemstone Therapists and more each have contributed to a growing body of knowledge about this "Natural Intelligence"
11 It is this deepening understanding that gives me hope for humanity and for what we can accomplish together.
12 I have personally taught people how to connect to natural intelligence using Therapeutic Gemstones for the past 15 years. In this way I have found a way to prove to myself the truth of the living wisdom of the Earth and I am so grateful for this connection to her. When I am able to listen to her and understand her designs and feel her subconscious, I discover more than a repository for human pain but rather a loving and brilliant yet hauntingly familiar presence. The Earth mother is alive. And rather than us trying to heal the earth, I believe that what is needed is for us to let the earth awaken us to our real place in the world. We have so much potential if we can listen and learn from the one who gave birth to us. We are meant to be creators! We could use some refresher courses on how to do that in harmony with the Earth though!

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 0 replies

Proof of God - 666 revealed

Tony — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 08:35:47 GMT

Here's some more proof of the existence of God. It is the revelation of the prophecy of 666, which is basically a warning and a call to action. God's intent is to save mankind, by warning us and inspiring us to change.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7620474927661514550&hl=en

I see lots of people talk about Gaia without linking it to God. I also see people talking about creating a Global Brain through the Internet, and no realizing that the Global Brain already exists and is God. This is just a little more proof of that.

Tony

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 17 replies

Oldest Arctic Ice is Melting

in-PHI-net — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 23:08:38 GMT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080318/sc_nm/ice_arctic_dc

However I don't believe this "melting" is just due ONLY because of human pollution". I feel very deeply that this planet is shifting with the rest of this galaxy. That is why it is getting hotter in places where it used to be cold (like here), and colder in other places where it used to be hot.

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 10 replies

Letter from very qualified scientists to the UN

psircles — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:22:30 GMT

Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations

Dec. 13, 2007

His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon

Secretary-General, United Nations

New York, N.Y.

Dear Mr. Secretary-General,

Re: UN climate conference taking the World in entirely the wrong direction

It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages. Geological, archaeological, oral and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, precipitation, winds and other climatic variables. We therefore need to equip nations to become resilient to the full range of these natural phenomena by promoting economic growth and wealth generation.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued increasingly alarming conclusions about the climatic influences of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2), a non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis. While we understand the evidence that has led them to view CO2 emissions as harmful, the IPCC’s conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions. On top of which, because attempts to cut emissions will slow development, the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it.

The IPCC Summaries for Policy Makers are the most widely read IPCC reports amongst politicians and non-scientists and are the basis for most climate change policy formulation. Yet these Summaries are prepared by a relatively small core writing team with the final drafts approved line-by-line by government representatives. The great majority of IPCC contributors and reviewers, and the tens of thousands of other scientists who are qualified to comment on these matters, are not involved in the preparation of these documents. The summaries therefore cannot properly be represented as a consensus view among experts.

Contrary to the impression left by the IPCC Summary reports:

z Recent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability.

z The average rate of warming of 0.1 to 0. 2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20th century falls within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years.

z Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today’s computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling.

In stark contrast to the often repeated assertion that the science of climate change is “settled,” significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. But because IPCC working groups were generally instructed (see http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/docs/wg1_timetable_2006-08-14.pdf) to consider work published only through May, 2005, these important findings are not included in their reports; i.e., the IPCC assessment reports are already materially outdated.

The UN climate conference in Bali has been planned to take the world along a path of severe CO2 restrictions, ignoring the lessons apparent from the failure of the Kyoto Protocol, the chaotic nature of the European CO2 trading market, and the ineffectiveness of other costly initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Balanced cost/benefit analyses provide no support for the introduction of global measures to cap and reduce energy consumption for the purpose of restricting CO2 emissions. Furthermore, it is irrational to apply the “precautionary principle” because many scientists recognize that both climatic coolings and warmings are realistic possibilities over the medium-term future.

The current UN focus on “fighting climate change,” as illustrated in the Nov. 27 UN Development Programme’s Human Development Report, is distracting governments from adapting to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever forms they may take. National and international planning for such changes is needed, with a focus on helping our most vulnerable citizens adapt to conditions that lie ahead. Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity’s real and pressing problems.

Yours faithfully,

[List of signatories]

The following are signatories to the Dec. 13th letter to the Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations on the UN Climate conference in Bali:

Don Aitkin, PhD, Professor, social scientist, retired vice-chancellor and president, University of Canberra, Australia

William J.R. Alexander, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Civil and Biosystems Engineering, University of Pretoria, South Africa; Member, UN Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters, 1994-2000

Bjarne Andresen, PhD, physicist, Professor, The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Geoff L. Austin, PhD, FNZIP, FRSNZ, Professor, Dept. of Physics, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Timothy F. Ball, PhD, environmental consultant, former climatology professor, University of Winnipeg

Ernst-Georg Beck, Dipl. Biol., Biologist, Merian-Schule Freiburg, Germany

Sonja A. Boehmer-Christiansen, PhD, Reader, Dept. of Geography, Hull University, U.K.; Editor, Energy & Environment journal

Chris C. Borel, PhD, remote sensing scientist, U.S.

Reid A. Bryson, PhD, DSc, DEngr, UNE P. Global 500 Laureate; Senior Scientist, Center for Climatic Research; Emeritus Professor of Meteorology, of Geography, and of Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin

Dan Carruthers, M.Sc., wildlife biology consultant specializing in animal ecology in Arctic and Subarctic regions, Alberta

R.M. Carter, PhD, Professor, Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia

Ian D. Clark, PhD, Professor, isotope hydrogeology and paleoclimatology, Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa

Richard S. Courtney, PhD, climate and atmospheric science consultant, IPCC expert reviewer, U.K.

Willem de Lange, PhD, Dept. of Earth and Ocean Sciences, School of Science and Engineering, Waikato University, New Zealand

David Deming, PhD (Geophysics), Associate Professor, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Oklahoma

Freeman J. Dyson, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, N.J.

Don J. Easterbrook, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Geology, Western Washington University

Lance Endersbee, Emeritus Professor, former dean of Engineering and Pro-Vice Chancellor of Monasy University, Australia

Hans Erren, Doctorandus, geophysicist and climate specialist, Sittard, The Netherlands

Robert H. Essenhigh, PhD, E.G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conversion, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, The Ohio State University

Christopher Essex, PhD, Professor of Applied Mathematics and Associate Director of the Program in Theoretical Physics, University of Western Ontario

David Evans, PhD, mathematician, carbon accountant, computer and electrical engineer and head of ‘Science Speak,’ Australia

William Evans, PhD, editor, American Midland Naturalist; Dept. of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame

Stewart Franks, PhD, Professor, Hydroclimatologist, University of Newcastle, Australia

R. W. Gauldie, PhD, Research Professor, Hawai’i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, School of Ocean Earth Sciences and Technology, University of Hawai’i at Manoa

Lee C. Gerhard, PhD, Senior Scientist Emeritus, University of Kansas; former director and state geologist, Kansas Geological Survey

Gerhard Gerlich, Professor for Mathematical and Theoretical Physics, Institut für Mathematische Physik der TU Braunschweig, Germany

Albrecht Glatzle, PhD, sc.agr., Agro-Biologist and Gerente ejecutivo, INTTAS, Paraguay

Fred Goldberg, PhD, Adjunct Professor, Royal Institute of Technology, Mechanical Engineering, Stockholm, Sweden

Vincent Gray, PhD, expert reviewer for the IPCC and author of The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of ‘Climate Change 2001, Wellington, New Zealand

William M. Gray, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University and Head of the Tropical Meteorology Project

Howard Hayden, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Connecticut

Louis Hissink MSc, M.A.I.G., editor, AIG News, and consulting geologist, Perth, Western Australia

Craig D. Idso, PhD, Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Arizona

Sherwood B. Idso, PhD, President, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, AZ, USA

Andrei Illarionov, PhD, Senior Fellow, Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity; founder and director of the Institute of Economic Analysis

Zbigniew Jaworowski, PhD, physicist, Chairman – Scientific Council of Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection, Warsaw, Poland

Jon Jenkins, PhD, MD, computer modelling – virology, NSW, Australia

Wibjorn Karlen, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden

Olavi Kärner, Ph.D., Research Associate, Dept. of Atmospheric Physics, Institute of Astrophysics and Atmospheric Physics, Toravere, Estonia

Joel M. Kauffman, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, University of the Sciences in Philadelphia

David Kear, PhD, FRSNZ, CMG, geologist, former Director-General of NZ Dept. of Scientific & Industrial Research, New Zealand

Madhav Khandekar, PhD, former research scientist, Environment Canada; editor, Climate Research (2003-05); editorial board member, Natural Hazards; IPCC expert reviewer 2007

William Kininmonth M.Sc., M.Admin., former head of Australia’s National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological organization’s Commission for Climatology Jan J.H. Kop, MSc Ceng FICE (Civil Engineer Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers), Emeritus Prof. of Public Health Engineering, Technical University Delft, The Netherlands

Prof. R.W.J. Kouffeld, Emeritus Professor, Energy Conversion, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Salomon Kroonenberg, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Geotechnology, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Hans H.J. Labohm, PhD, economist, former advisor to the executive board, Clingendael Institute (The Netherlands Institute of International Relations), The Netherlands

The Rt. Hon. Lord Lawson of Blaby, economist; Chairman of the Central Europe Trust; former Chancellor of the Exchequer, U.K.

Douglas Leahey, PhD, meteorologist and air-quality consultant, Calgary

David R. Legates, PhD, Director, Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware

Marcel Leroux, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Climatology, University of Lyon, France; former director of Laboratory of Climatology, Risks and Environment, CNRS

Bryan Leyland, International Climate Science Coalition, consultant and power engineer, Auckland, New Zealand

William Lindqvist, PhD, independent consulting geologist, Calif.

Richard S. Lindzen, PhD, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

A.J. Tom van Loon, PhD, Professor of Geology (Quaternary Geology), Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland; former President of the European Association of Science Editors

Anthony R. Lupo, PhD, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Science, Dept. of Soil, Environmental, and Atmospheric Science, University of Missouri-Columbia

Richard Mackey, PhD, Statistician, Australia

Horst Malberg, PhD, Professor for Meteorology and Climatology, Institut für Meteorologie, Berlin, Germany

John Maunder, PhD, Climatologist, former President of the Commission for Climatology of the World Meteorological Organization (89-97), New Zealand

Alister McFarquhar, PhD, international economy, Downing College, Cambridge, U.K.

Ross McKitrick, PhD, Associate Professor, Dept. of Economics, University of Guelph

John McLean, PhD, climate data analyst, computer scientist, Australia

Owen McShane, PhD, economist, head of the International Climate Science Coalition; Director, Centre for Resource Management Studies, New Zealand

Fred Michel, PhD, Director, Institute of Environmental Sciences and Associate Professor of Earth Sciences, Carleton University

Frank Milne, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Economics, Queen’s University

Asmunn Moene, PhD, former head of the Forecasting Centre, Meteorological Institute, Norway

Alan Moran, PhD, Energy Economist, Director of the IPA’s Deregulation Unit, Australia

Nils-Axel Morner, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics, Stockholm University, Sweden

Lubos Motl, PhD, Physicist, former Harvard string theorist, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

John Nicol, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Physics, James Cook University, Australia

David Nowell, M.Sc., Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, former chairman of the NATO Meteorological Group, Ottawa

James J. O’Brien, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Meteorology and Oceanography, Florida State University

Cliff Ollier, PhD, Professor Emeritus (Geology), Research Fellow, University of Western Australia

Garth W. Paltridge, PhD, atmospheric physicist, Emeritus Professor and former Director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies, University of Tasmania, Australia

R. Timothy Patterson, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences (paleoclimatology), Carleton University

Al Pekarek, PhD, Associate Professor of Geology, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Dept., St. Cloud State University, Minnesota

Ian Plimer, PhD, Professor of Geology, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide and Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia

Brian Pratt, PhD, Professor of Geology, Sedimentology, University of Saskatchewan

Harry N.A. Priem, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Planetary Geology and Isotope Geophysics, Utrecht University; former director of the Netherlands Institute for Isotope Geosciences

Alex Robson, PhD, Economics, Australian National University Colonel F.P.M. Rombouts, Branch Chief – Safety, Quality and Environment, Royal Netherland Air Force

R.G. Roper, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology

Arthur Rorsch, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Molecular Genetics, Leiden University, The Netherlands

Rob Scagel, M.Sc., forest microclimate specialist, principal consultant, Pacific Phytometric Consultants, B.C.

Tom V. Segalstad, PhD, (Geology/Geochemistry), Head of the Geological Museum and Associate Professor of Resource and Environmental Geology, University of Oslo, Norway

Gary D. Sharp, PhD, Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study, Salinas, CA

S. Fred Singer, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia and former director Weather Satellite Service

L. Graham Smith, PhD, Associate Professor, Dept. of Geography, University of Western Ontario

Roy W. Spencer, PhD, climatologist, Principal Research Scientist, Earth System Science Center, The University of Alabama, Huntsville

Peter Stilbs, TeknD, Professor of Physical Chemistry, Research Leader, School of Chemical Science and Engineering, KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), Stockholm, Sweden

Hendrik Tennekes, PhD, former director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute

Dick Thoenes, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Chemical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands

Brian G Valentine, PhD, PE (Chem.), Technology Manager – Industrial Energy Efficiency, Adjunct Associate Professor of Engineering Science, University of Maryland at College Park; Dept of Energy, Washington, DC

Gerrit J. van der Lingen, PhD, geologist and paleoclimatologist, climate change consultant, Geoscience Research and Investigations, New Zealand

Len Walker, PhD, Power Engineering, Australia

Edward J. Wegman, PhD, Department of Computational and Data Sciences, George Mason University, Virginia

Stephan Wilksch, PhD, Professor for Innovation and Technology Management, Production Management and Logistics, University of Technolgy and Economics Berlin, Germany

Boris Winterhalter, PhD, senior marine researcher (retired), Geological Survey of Finland, former professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, Finland

David E. Wojick, PhD, P.Eng., energy consultant, Virginia

Raphael Wust, PhD, Lecturer, Marine Geology/Sedimentology, James Cook University, Australia

A. Zichichi, PhD, President of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva, Switzerland; Emeritus Professor of Advanced Physics, University of Bologna, Italy

Copy to: Heads of state of countries of the signatory persons.

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 2 replies

Global Warming -- Doomsday Called Off

Od — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:48:28 GMT

Five-part CBC documentary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr5O1HsTVgA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD6VBLlWmCI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZS2eIRkcR0&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIbTJ6mhCqk&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2XALmrq3ro&NR=1

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 3 replies

Confirmation Reminder for July 4th Camp-Out/Pot Luck at the Freedom Farm

Cherri — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:43:17 GMT

The Four Corners Trade Network, a community of Intentional Communities
is holding its first gathering on July 4th 2008 at the Organic Freedom
Farm (www.organicfreedom.com)

All are invited and encouraged to take part in trade of goods,
services, and ideas community related.

If you have not yet sent us your confirmation as of yet, please do so
via email organicfreedom@earthlink.net and/or join the Four Corners
Trade Network at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TradeNetwork/?yguid=219225594

Blessings,
Frank and Cherri

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 0 replies

The Man-Made Global Warming Hoax

Od — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:13:15 GMT

The Man-Made Global Warming Hoax (8-part documentary):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpWa7VW-OME

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpX-Kae00s8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BJrdSRDVlQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf6C0cMq3RU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkSmdaLkd60&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlSSwErKWQs&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efxToyX5cPw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGZ1bHo6jR0&feature=related

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 0 replies

Geothermal power and solar power are the answers

prometheusPAN — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:10:49 GMT

geothermal power and solar power are the real answers to the global warming problem.
Biofuels, nuclear power, and fossil fuels, as well as global warming denial are non solutions.

All the power we need can be derived from geothermal power. In fact, theres 130000 times more of it available than we use right now.

http://mytalktoday.com/forum/forum.php
http://mytalktoday.com/forum/index.php

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 4 replies

our Gaia mother

bearsky — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:16:53 GMT

She informed me that She is the spirit of this earth exactly the way that we are the spirit of this body we inhabit. Also, She said that she is not my mother. She pointed out that I am an eternal being having no mother or father, no birth or death - that such are peculiar concepts in this world but without meaning in eternity. This world teaches lessons relevant to our eternity.
I really wanted Her to be my mother, the mother of us all, and did not initially take it well although I immediately recognized the truth of what She said.

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 0 replies

20 Astral Keys to Gates of Universal Consciousness

DMG/Darkmother.com — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 18:29:28 GMT

Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist who developed the field of analytical psychology and introduced the concept of archetypes of consciousness being "innate universal psychic dispositions that form the substrate from which the basic themes of human life emerge. Being universal and innate, their influence can be detected in the form of myths, symbols, rituals and instincts of human beings. Archetypes are components of the collective unconscious and serve to organize, direct and inform human thought and behaviour. ...archetypes heavily influence the human life cycle, propelling a neurologically hard-wired sequence which he called the stages of life. Each stage is mediated through a new set of archetypal imperatives which seek fulfillment in action."[1]

Centuries before Jung, the Maya introduced the very similar concept of Archetypes of Divine Consciousness. (According to the Maya, there are 20 of them.) Likewise, these Archetypes form the substrate from which individual Divine Consciousness emerges. Also being components of the collective unconscious, the Maya-identified Archetypes organize, direct and engender Divine thought and behavior in the human experience, in stages, over the course of days, months, years, ...millennia. Hard wired into the binary code of DNA and the human brain, these Archetypes are mediated through the permutations of an universal, binary, object oriented Code evident in and galactically broadcast by harmonic star cycles. The Maya perceived the astral Nature of the Code and embodied It in a "lunar calendar." Regarded as their Sacred Calendar, they call it the "Tzolkin." The Tzolkin enables them to track the cycles, the individual stages of the cycles [i.e. days] and the progressive effects of those intermeshed stages in order to further enable them to live in conscious alignment and synchronicity with the 20 Archetypes. According to the Maya, living in such alignment and synchronicity activates the inherent Divine Consciousness latent within the individual consciousness. Thus activated, the Divine Unconscious within can be consciously harnessed and channeled for communlal and personal well being.

Being both harmonic and binary in Nature, the Tzolkin's Code has been digitized and expressed in sound. As the stuff of our bodies comes from starlight, the acoustic expressions (of the Code's objects relative to the individual Archetypes) directly facilitate an exclusively positive rewiring of the brain, aligning and synchronizing its synapses with the dynamics of the respective Archetypes, and having a sympathetic effect advancing the activation of analogous higher functions of DNA. (Rather than needing to track the individual harmonic stages of the Archetypes as they naturally occur staggered over the course of months and larger spans of Time, as Maya clerics have done for centuries, the Archetypes' entire harmonic sequences can be heard in seconds.) Each of the Archetypes has been individually recorded (in great for meditation lengths) and embodied in "The Mayan Book of Wisdom" (a cognitive/consciousness enhancement software product from DarkMother.com).

On this Summer Solstice weekend, in the interest of fostering the planetary increase of Light, you can download an abridged version of The Mayan Book of Wisdom containing 3:00.00 excerpts of the full length (13:00.00) expressions of the 20 Archetypes. They're for you - Download them, experience them, use them; enjoy them.

http://www.darkmother.com/mbow/mbow-demopack.exe

For more information on the harmonic nature of the Tzolkin, visit and peruse DarkMother.com. (These Archetypes are fundamental components of all the complex Tzolkin acoustic translations embodied in company's "Ascension" series.)

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 0 replies

Global Eden Event / The Gathering of One Meditation

eesha — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 03:37:47 GMT

At my site, I have posted as a blog the script for the meditation for the Gathering which is tonight - centered at Yellowstone with others joining in at sites all over the planet and many thousands more simultaneously connecting to this wave of Love and Peace.
There are also links to listen to this meditation and to learn more about this annual event.

Apologies for not posting this BEfore the event...

But you can still merge with this powerful vibration happening at any time.

with smiles and blessings flowing
eesha

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 0 replies

Dolphins Whales and bloody oil

Stella Maris — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:23:14 GMT

http://usactions.greenpeace.org/action/start.php?action_id=200

You've seen the headlines today - McCain, Bush, and Gingrich are organizing a push to drill for oil along our coastlines and lift a 27 year moratorium. They seem to be taking advantage of high gas prices to help their friends in big oil make even more money. Opening up our coastline to drilling will take up to 10 years before the first drop of oil would reach your local gas stations and it would last for less than 10 years - yet the devastation it will cause is hardly worth the price.

Opening our national coastlines to oil exploration would begin with seismic testing to find where the oil is located. Seismic blasts have a decibel level of 260 - that's more than twice as loud as an ambulance siren. Whales, dolphins and other marine mammals rely on their sense of hearing to navigate, to locate food and to communicate with each other. Exposure to this level of sound underwater can cause deafening disorientation and can lead to permanent damage and brain hemorrhaging and even cause entire pods of whales and dolphins to beach. Only last week over 100 melon-head whales beached off of Madagascar close to where ExxonMobil was conducting seismic testing.

TAKE ACTION >> Tell your friends to help put a STOP to plans to drill our coastal waters! http://usactions.greenpeace.org/action/start.php?action_id=200

Seismic testing is not the only danger offshore drilling would cause for our oceans and wildlife. Major oil spills would threaten our beaches, fish, and marine mammals. And global warming is already a major threat to our world's oceans, and despite McCain's efforts to combat it, drilling for more oil will only cause more greenhouse gas emissions.

Instead of pushing for more drilling, we should be investing in renewable energy sources.

In order to stop this concerted effort to drill offshore, I need YOUR help to mobilize your friends, family, and coworkers. It's up to each of us to share the real impacts of drilling offshore. Please, take just a second to sign our petition to McCain and pass it along to your friends.

Thank you,

John Passacantando
Executive Director

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 2 replies

produce meditation

H.P. Meow Meow Meow — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:28:29 GMT

http://people.tribe.net/bf1f028b-b311-4f86-95de-ec182c0e46c8/blog/e5cbfb86-b708-4b07-b2ba-fe7b7743ad59

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 0 replies

Please sign new Save Tara online petition

Michael Martin — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:56:33 GMT

Happy World Environment Day

PLEASE SIGN THE NEW SAVE TARA UNESCO PETITION ONLINE (Text below)
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/savetara/index.html

TaraWatch is celebrating UN World Environment Day 2008, with an online
version the new Tara UNESCO / ICOMOS petition, being launched on the
Internet today. The petition calls on the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), and International
Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) to declare the Hill of Tara
cultural landscape a World Heritage Site, but to insist that the M3
motorway is rerouted first.

Social network applications like myspace and facebook causes will be
heavily used to promote it. The new myspace SAVE TARA Cause Ranked 1st
among new Environment causes in new members yesterday.
http://www.causes.com/myspace/causes/71127?recruiter_id=6916545

This follows on from the successful launch of the SAVE TARA facebook
cause, which already has over 2,800 members.
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/827?recruiter_id=6916545

World Environment Day, commemorated each year on 5 June, is one of the
principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates
worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention
and action. It is only fitting that we in turn launch our campaign
today, calling on them to act to save Tara.
http://www.unep.org/wed/2008/english/

=============================================================

TARA / M3 MOTORWAY - UNESCO / ICOMOS PETITION ONLINE
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/savetara/index.html

THIS PETITION is addressed to: The United Nations educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), which includes:
• The Director-General, Koïchiro Matsuura
• The Executive Committee of the General Conference
• The Intergovernmental Committee for the Protection of the World
Cultural and Natural Heritage, called the World eritage Committee
(hereinafter referred to as the "Committee")
• All parties in attendance at the 32nd Session of the World Heritage
Committee, Quebec, Canada, 2-10 July 2008.
• The Irish UNESCO Representatives

AND The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), which
includes:

• ICOMOS International
• ICOMOS Ireland
• All other national ICOMOS bodies, such as ICOMOS Canada, UK, US,
Australia, Norway, and Aotearoa/New Zealand
• All parties in attendance at the ICOMOS Ireland AGM, Dublin, 4 June
2008
• All parties in attendance at the Sixth World Archaeological Congress,
University College Dublin, 29th June to 4th July 2008

WHOSE JURISDICTIONS have been jointly invoked in this matter of great
national and international importance by the Minister for the
Environment, Heritage and Local overnment, of the Republic of Ireland,
John Gormley, on 11 May, 2008, in his address at the launch of the
legal incorporation and charitable status designation of ICOMOS
Ireland. He announced that he had retained an ICOMOS member, Dr Jukka
Jokilehto to visit the sites currently on Ireland's tentative list, as
well as the Hill of Tara. Minister Gormley concluded:

"The Hill of Tara National Monument has strong merit for inclusion in
an application to UNESCO for consideration as a World Heritage site",
and that he did "... not see the proposed new road (the M3 motorway)
as being an obstacle to making this recommendation."

I EARNESTLY AND RESPECTFULLY PLEAD THAT:

I. The Hill of Tara archaeological complex / cultural and natural
landscape, in it's entirety, (hereinafer referred to as "Tara") be
inscribed onto the UNESCO List of World Heritage sites.

BUT ONLY on condition that:

II. The proposed M3 motorway, (hereinafter referred to as "the M3")
currently under construction, is re-routed beyond Tara, before the site
is given World Heritage Site status, because he M3 is destroying the
integrity of the site and landscape.

I MAKE THIS PETITION FOR THE FOLLOWING REASONS:

- UNESCO adopted the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World
Cultural and Natural Heritage ("The Convention") in 1972. Ireland
ratified the Convention in 1991. The Convention has as its goal the
identification and protection of cultural and national heritage of
"outstanding universal value".

- The Hill of Tara complex qualifies as a natural and cultural
landscape of outstanding universal value, due to it's unique cultural
significance, and the extent of the surviving remains. Tara covers a
much larger area than that the 100 acres of State-owned land on the
summit of the Hill, which currently delimits the 'national monument'.
The M3 passes through the middle of the area to be protected.

- The entire Tara archaeological complex and cultural/natural landscape
should be declared a World Heritage site. Expert bodies, such as the
Heritage Council, have recognised Tara consists of the entire Hill of
Tara along with the Tara / Skryne valley, as well as the defensive
forts that encircle the hill, including national monuments such as the
defensive forts of Rath Lugh (to the east), Rath Miles (to the north)
and Ringlestown Rath (to the west).

- Ireland has been in breach of the Convention since 1991, by failing
to nominate the Hill of Tara to be a World Heritage site, until after
the M3 motorway was approved. Article 3 of the Convention states: "It
is for each State Party to this Convention to identify and delineate
the different properties situated on its territory". A recent UN report
on Ireland's implementation of the Convention found that "Inventories,
established at national and local levels, have not been used as a basis
for selecting World Heritage sites". This has resulted in the
contradictory approach being taken by the Irish Government, which is on
one hand facilitating destruction of significant parts of the Tara
complex, and on the other, seeking International legal protection for
those same parts.

- The Minister for the Environment, has breached his responsibilities
under the Convention by initiating the inscription process of making
Tara a World Heritage site, while at the same time, failing in his
legal duty adequately protect the Tara complex from the immient threat
of the M3 motorway. John Gormley, said in a department press release,
11 April 2008, that he did not see M3 motorway preventing the Hill of
Tara from being nominated as a world heritage site. He said his
department had engaged Dr Jukka Jokilehto, a member of ICOMOS to visit
Tara and issue a report on it. It is these statements and actions that
have as well as other failures to act, that have invoked the
jurisdiction of international law.

- ICOMOS is an international non-governmental organization of
professionals, dedicated to the conservation of the world's historic
monuments and sites, and is an offical Advistory Body to UNESCO, for
purposes of implementing the World Heritage Convention. Both UNESCO and
ICOMOS would also be in breach of the Convention by accepting the
Minister's nomination of the Tara archaeological complex and
cultural/natural landscape, without insisting that the M3 motorway is
rerouted, while it still can be.

- National survey's have shown that 70% of Irish people want the M3
rerouted and an Irish Times online survey showed that 82% of people
want Tara declared a UNESCO site.

- The World Monuments Fund have placed the Hill of Tara on the 2008
List of 100 Most Endangered Sites.

SIGNED

_______________________________

[Published by TaraWatch.org, 4 June 2008]

=====================================================

For more information see:

UNESCO
http://whc.unesco.org/en/about/

ICOMOS
http://www.icomos.org

Statement by Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local
overnment, of the Republic of Ireland, John Gormley, on 11 May, 2008,
http://www.environ.ie/en/Heritage/Archaeology-NationalMonumentsService/News/Main\
Body,17071,en.htm

Save the Hill of Tara from the M3 Motorway!
http://www.tarawatch.org

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 2 replies

Sun

JohnWilly — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 22:02:45 GMT

My ancestors are not risen from their deaths and guiding me from Heaven,
so with one life I am searching and I have found evidence of God.
The key to my divine discovery is synchronicity -
the knowledge of our Universe in humanity.

Synchronicity is visible in everything which relates to humankind, from the near approach of Earth and Mars on an American president's birthday to the cataclysmic Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami which coincided with the birth of a beloved and famous television personality. Synchronicity is scientifically proven but it's generally unsought and it's value unnoticed. Carl Jung, the Swiss scientist who coined synchronicity, studied the subject but his work died soon after he died. The motion of Earth around our Sun, that's synchronicity. It's recognized but unkept. The majority of us, when we look at our Sun and other stars, don't give it another thought; our Sun is too bright and we're too dim to contemplate it, we might believe. Meaningful coincidence, kismet, grace, synchronicity, it's a mystery we've all experienced and I've taken it a few steps further to show how events of all levels of importance are connected. I'm not building a better computer or engineering a better cow, I'm saying there's no separation between us and God. Language is human-created and generated, all from the same singular source and one of the tricks to understanding the miracle of synchronicity is the discovery of the intimate and luminous link between humankind and the system of Earth and sky, our system of great industrial and individual innovations and ideas, of family and personal evolution.

August 27:
2003 - The close encounter of Earth and Mars. The last time Mars was as close had been 60,000 years prior.
1962 - America's NASA Mariner 2 spacecraft departed Earth for Venus.
1908 - U.S. President Lyndon Johnson was born.
1906 - Inventor Lee DeForest filed his patent application at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the Audion, an electronic amplifier device. It was a major invention at the start of the electronics era.
1883 - One of Earth's most violent volcanic eruptions occurred, at Krakatoa, Indonesia.
1859 - The first oil well in the Americas was drilled, in Titusville, Pennsylvania, United States.

On August 27, 1859, Edwin Drake drilled the first successful oil well of the Americas in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Near another Titusville - Titusville, Florida - also an August 27th, America's Mariner 2 spacecraft was launched. It rocketed away from Cape Canaveral in 1962, on then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson's birthday. Mariner 2 reached Venus in late 1962, it was the first spacecraft to relay data from another planet in our solar system. On the anniversary of Mariner 2's launch, our Sun brought Earth and Mars near each other in 2003, the nearest the two planets had been in 60,000 years. The Earth-Mars close encounter harmonized with the eruption of Krakatoa on August 27, 1883, one of Earth's most violent volcanic eruptions. The eruption created a tsunami which killed 36,000 Indonesians. Krakatoa is an island off Sumatra's southern coast and Sumatra's northern coast was the epicenter in 2004 of the cataclysmic magnitude 9.1 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami which killed 250,000 people in several nations. Exactly one week after Krakatoa's eruption telephonic pioneer Harold DeForest Arnold was born in Woodstock, Connecticut, home of puppeteer Caroll Spinney, Sesame Street's Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch. Harold DeForest Arnold was the man who delivered our world long-distance radio and transcontinental telephone service. He died the year Caroll Spinney was born. The catastrophic Indian Ocean earthquake occurred on Spinney's birthday: December 26th. Sun... is Spinning Earth. Synchronicity is simplicity, the Sun, the creator of life, giver of sight. Harold DeForest Arnold delivered our world long-distance radio and transcontinental telephone service using the audion tube, an electronic amplifier device invented in 1906 by another DeForest - Lee DeForest. Lee DeForest had celebrated his 10th birthday one day before the eruption of Krakatoa. He filed his patent application for the audion at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on the anniversary of Krakatoa's eruption, the anniversary of the drilling of the first oil well of the Americas, the day Mariner 2 was launched. Volcanoes, oil wells and rockets, all three can have an eruptive, ejaculatory quality. Johnson(as in President Lyndon Johnson, for whom The Johnson Space Center in Houston is named) is slang for penis, another in the line of things which do erupt and ejaculate, and potentially give life. Volcanoes can create land, oil can produce light and give life to machines, and sperm, alive inside all men, made every mammal on the planet and are swimming their way towards eggs now. And rockets, rockets can inspire imaginations.

Johnny

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=7036707&blogID=392094215

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 3 replies

Marc Emery has Time 2 Spare!

Casper Leitch — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:27:04 GMT

The fight is on between Marc Emery and the United States Government - giving the founder and editor of Cannabis Culture Magazine some time to spare -AND more Time 4 Hemp.
This new interview is free to download at http://www.Time4Hemp.tv

Music Artists:

The Tall Brothers
Green Feever
Shen Reefer and the Resin Valley Boys
Marlon Asher
Bob Dylan

Please share this information with everyone you know who would enjoy it.

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 1 reply

Battle at Kruger National Park

trancedan — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 23:45:03 GMT

Someone filmed and uploaded some fabulous footage of wildlife in action at a national park in South Africa. In the 8 minute clip, a pride of lions attack a herd of buffalo and captured a calf. A crocadile then attempts to take the calf from the lions, but the lions manage to hang onto it. Then the herd of buffalo return and, amazingly, save the calf who seemingly rises from the dead to return to the herd. My heart pounds just watching it -- can't imagine what it must've been like in person!

http://www.ifilm.com/video/2863983?ns=1

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 12 replies

Take the Profit Out of Global Warming, Nationalize the Oil Industry

steveargue2 — Sat, 24 May 2008 22:17:58 GMT

Take the Profit Out of Global Warming and War, Nationalize the Oil Industry

Global Warming, the Biggest Threat to Humanity and Other Living Things

By STEVEN ARGUE

In Myanmar the death toll from a cyclone is, according to the Red Cross, between 69,000 and 128,000 people, with many more deaths possible from disease and starvation. Adding to the ferocity of the storm’s impact has been the fact that much of the mangrove habitat that had protected the Myanmar coast has been cleared. In addition, with strong parallels to Bush’s refusal to accept thousands of well trained and well equipped aid workers who would have saved lives in New Orleans, the repressive capitalist government of Myanmar has hindered the ability of international aid workers to do what needs to be done to save lives in Myanmar.

Last year, China had their worst cyclone in over 50 years. Around the world, warmer oceans are increasing the frequency and severity of hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons. This is happening because the world’s warmer oceans feed more moisture into these tropical storms. As a result, computer models of global warming also project hurricanes in places that haven’t had them in known human history. One of these projections was that hurricanes would form in the South Atlantic. Fitting predictions, the first ever known South Atlantic hurricane made landfall on southern Brazil in 2004.

Last year Tokyo had a warm winter, with no snow cover for the first time in recorded history.

California is having the driest spring in 150 years, with regular water shortages in the long-term projections as a result of global warming. Already, on May 22, a wildfire started in the Santa Cruz Mountains, burning thousands of acres and destroying homes. That fire has yet to be contained. With wildfires starting this early, there is reason to fear this upcoming fire season in California.

The Santa Cruz area has a Mediterranean climate. These climates are characterized by winter rainy seasons and dry summers. Places with Mediterranean climates around the world are facing dryer weather with more wildfires. This is also happening in Greece and Australia. Forests and chaparral are burning up as habitats are changing and adjacent deserts are expanding.

The ice sheets in the arctic are disappearing at an ever increasing rate, and some of the latest predictions now project the potential of northern summer ice sheets completely disappearing within six years, bringing on the extinction of the polar bear and other species. As the white ice and snow disappears, dark ocean absorbs more of the sun’s heat, and escalates the rate of global warming even further.

In 2005 the Amazon River basin faced a drought never seen in recorded history. For the first time in recorded history a stretch of the Amazon River went completely dry in 2005, with causes attributed to a combination of less rainfall, smaller glaciers in the Andes (as a result of melting), and deforestation. Computer models predict that the rains that are necessary for the continued flow of the Amazon River will dry up due to the warmth of the Atlantic Ocean, causing moisture to fall directly as rain into the Atlantic rather than being blown inland. In addition to these projections saying that the Amazon River will dry up as a result of global warming, they also say that the Amazon rainforest will begin a regression first to grassland ending with the massive desertification of the Amazon Basin within the next one-hundred years. This, and other processes of desertification around the world, will, like rising oceans, cause starvation, massive refugee crisis’s, and also cause mass extinction of plant and animal species. Presently, the trees of the Amazon Forest remove greenhouse carbon from the atmosphere, but as climate changes and the forest disappears, this process will reverse itself, and the region will be adding carbon to the atmosphere.

Today, every national academy of science of the industrialized world recognizes human caused global warming as a fact. These include the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences who explicitly use the word "consensus" on the issue.

Yet there are a few voices who claim that human caused global warming is a myth. Among these is the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a foundation funded by ExxonMobile. Under pressure, ExxonMobile declared they would no longer fund such groups. Yet, a study of ExxonMobiles tax returns showed they were lying and that they were still funding 14 other similar groups. Among these is the organization “Frontiers for Freedom” who recently issued a report that was dedicated to attacking Al Gore and global warming science.

The problem of global warming is one that will, and is, devastating the planet’s environment, causing mass extinction of species while also destroying agricultural and habitable land through rising oceans, more severe hurricanes, droughts, more unpredictable weather, increases in tropical diseases, the slowing of ocean currents causing year round freezing weather with a potential ice age in the northern hemisphere combined with higher temperatures closer to the equator, and the potential of runaway global warming with the melting of the ocean’s methane hydride that could actually cause the extinction of the human species as well as most other species on the planet.

The United States is still the biggest contributor to global warming in the world. Per capita, China has much lower carbon emissions than the United States. Likewise, historically their output is also much less than the United States. No country outdoes the extreme per-capita output of US consumerism, nor do they outdo the historic US output, output which stays in the atmosphere for a long time and continues to contribute to global warming today.

China needs to deal with their pollution too, but their carbon footprint per person is much, much lower than the United States. In addition, the growing output in China is, to a large extent, being done by US corporations who have moved to China, so once again, US capitalists are largely to blame, even for Chinese carbon output. Yet, the Chinese Communist Party’s abandonment of socialism, and lack of true workers democracy under one party Stalinist rule, is also part of the problem.

Despite the severity of this problem and the key role the United States has played in creating it, the U.S. government and corporate leaders do worse than nothing, and have blocked and sabotaged all potential solutions for the past fifty years up until the present.

The United States needs an emergency program to dramatically lower carbon emissions. Without it we are doomed. Yet both ruling capitalist parties in the United States have been in the back pockets of big oil and coal, and have refused to do anything. A first step to save the planet and end imperialist wars, once the people gain power, will be the nationalization of the energy industries.

The first scientist to discuss global warming was Swedish Chemist Svante Arrhenius, a chemist who made many discoveries essential to modern chemistry, who in 1896 warned that a doubling of the world's atmospheric carbon dioxide would increase the world's temperatures by five to six degrees Celsius. With catastrophic implications, this is very close to current predictions. By 1957, scientists Roger Revelle and Hans Suess at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California put out the first warnings about human caused global warming that were taken seriously by the scientific community. Yet, despite this information being readily available for fifty years, the U.S. government and U.S. corporations failed to act in a favorable way at that time, and presently they continue to be an obstacle to action on global warming.

The current lack of action is due to the massive profits that continue to be made by the big oil corporations, and the political strength they have in being able to buy the politicians in Washington. Nothing short of nationalizing the oil industry, a move that would take corporate profit out of continued greenhouse gas emissions, will break this country from its suicidal drive towards profits at the price of the destruction of the entire planet. Yet the nationalization of oil will not take place within the current power structure of a nation ruled by two capitalist parties that are only elected through the support of massive contributions from the extremely wealthy and the backing of the corporate media. Although there will be a hard struggle ahead, only a revolutionary democratic socialist movement that comes from below can achieve the transformations of the power structure needed to nationalize oil and save the planet.

Today, the full extent of the problem of human caused global warming is the focus of considerable scientific research. World temperatures have already increased significantly and are rising at an alarming rate. As global temperatures have risen, ice shelves and glaciers in the Arctic, Antarctic, and mountains have been rapidly melting. So much ice has melted and dropped in the Ocean that the maps of Antarctica have had to be redrawn. In Greenland, it has been found that the increased layer of melted water between glaciers and the ground below is in fact greatly increasing the speed in which glaciers slide into the ocean.

All of this increased water in the world’s oceans is causing sea levels to rise. The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu is projected to be the first island nation to be completely submerged by global warming. Rising saltwater has already destroyed crop land and is contaminating their ground water. As a result, Tuvaluans now only drink rainwater and have to import a much greater portion of their food than they did in the past. The nation of 9,300 has already begun a program of evacuating 75 people per year from their islands, with 3,000 Tuvaluans already living overseas. Not only is Tuvalu taking the question of global warming seriously enough to begin evacuation of their islands, their tiny poor nation has decided to spend the $1.5 million per year necessary to be members of the United Nations in order to advocate world action against global warming. While what is happening to Tuvaluans is alarming, the coming elimination of Tuvalu from the planet is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the human and environmental crisis that will be caused by rising seas. As the trend continues, much of low lying nations such as Bangladesh and Vietnam are projected to be swallowed by rising waters, creating millions upon millions of refugees, and destroying some of the most productive crop land in the world, bringing with it a massive humanitarian crisis of refugees and starvation as well as the extinction of many species. In addition, low lying areas of the United States, such as Manhattan and Florida, will be submerged as well.

One disturbing theory regarding global warming makes the seemingly contradictory projection that global warming will trigger a new ice-age. Yet a large and growing body of scientific evidence does back this prediction. It is based on the fact that ocean currents in the Atlantic, including the Gulf Stream, are expected to disappear as a result of large amounts of fresh water melting and disrupting ocean currents. These currents move cold water from the north Atlantic south as well as warmer water north, mitigating what would be the extremes between both northern and southern climates. Twenty thousand years ago, at the height of the last ice-age, a reduction of ocean currents by two thirds drastically decreased the temperatures of the northern hemisphere and plunged much of North America and Europe into year-round winter. Already, measurements of ocean currents off of Greenland indicate that ocean currents there have decreased by 20%. The transformation of most of North America and Europe into frozen wasteland will, like rising oceans and desertification, cause mass starvation, a massive refugee crisis, and also cause mass extinction of plant and animal species.

Much of global warming is proceeding at even faster rates than original dire predictions, due to what are called positive feedback loops. These are phenomena that are caused by global warming on the one hand, and are accelerating global warming on the other. Among positive feedback loops is the melting of ice and snow. As more ice melts, warmth from the sun that was reflected back out of the atmosphere by light colored snow and ice; is more readily absorbed by newly exposed darker colored ground and ocean water. This is why the arctic is currently heating up at a much faster rate than anywhere else.

Carbon sinks, things that take global warming causing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, are also being destroyed by global warming. Fossil fuels (when they aren’t burned) such as oil and coal are the ultimate carbon sinks, where prehistoric carbon was moved out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis and buried in the ground. Unfortunately, as these fuel sources are burned, their carbon is now being released back into the atmosphere. Some other important carbon sinks are forests and peat bogs, where these plants take carbon dioxide out of the air and convert it into sugars, carbohydrates, and cellulose. While direct human destruction of forests and peat bogs for lumber, fuel, and cropland is destroying these important carbon sinks, so too do phenomena such as global warming caused desertification.

Another important carbon sink, caught in a global warming related positive feedback loop, are the activities of the ocean’s forams, tiny organisms that, in their massive numbers, use up vast amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide as it passes freely between the atmosphere and the oceans. When forams die, much of the carbon they’ve converted drops with their shells to the bottom of the ocean. Yet, this process is now being interrupted by the increased acidity of the oceans caused by the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and oceans. Forams are unable to function properly under these conditions of higher acidity and are thus removing less carbon from the atmosphere.

So a number of causes have been identified where increased carbon dioxide and increased global warming cause even more atmospheric carbon dioxide and more global warming. In addition, the most dire predictions dealing with positive feedback mechanisms is the melting of methane hydride on the bottoms of the world’s oceans. As the oceans heat up, the melting of this material will release methane gas into the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is even worse than carbon dioxide. A leading theory on the cause of the Permian extinction 251 million years ago, an extinction episode that killed off 95 percent of all species on earth, is that the extinction episode was first triggered by carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere by Siberian volcanoes for an extended period of time that led to global warming that reached temperatures high enough to melt methane hydride on the bottom of the oceans.

The combination of high carbon dioxide and methane gas concentrations in the atmosphere then dramatically increased the temperatures of the oceans, causing them to become anoxic. The oceans became anoxic because as water gets warmer it holds less oxygen. In addition, warmer ocean waters circulate less, moving less oxygenated water from the ocean’s surface deeper into the ocean.

Anoxic waters no longer support most advanced plants and animals, but they do support a number of species of bacteria that are adapted to such conditions. These bacteria include species that produce hydrogen sulfide as a waste product of their metabolism. Hydrogen sulfide is poisonous to humans and other organisms dependent on oxygen. It is thought that large amounts of hydrogen sulfide from the world’s heated anoxic oceans entered the atmosphere and killed off almost all life on land during the Permian Extinction. Human caused global warming today, if it is not stopped, may well set in motion the same series of events, and wipe out most species on earth, including the human race.

As U.N. secretary-general Ban told delegates at the December 2007 U.N. climate conference in Bali, "We are at a crossroad, one path leads to a comprehensive climate change agreement, the other to oblivion. The choice is clear." Yet despite a willingness on the part of a number of nations to take some action, and despite overwhelming scientific evidence, the United States, the worst polluter of gasses causing global warming in the world, refuses to sign on to international agreements limiting greenhouse gas emissions. While most environmentalists agree that these Kyoto protocols are not enough, the United States signing on to them would at least be a step in the right direction. If the United States continues to do nothing in regards to global warming except participate in denial while spewing the worst per-capita carbon emissions in the world, the human and environmental catastrophe of global warming will become much worse, and human extinction becomes more and more likely.

In advocating something be done, American environmentalists often point to many individual things people can do to slow one’s personal impact on global warming. These include driving less and generally using combustion engines less, recycling, becoming a vegetarian or vegan, consuming less, using solar or wind energy, planting trees, avoiding cutting down trees, and saving forests and peat bogs. All of these things are positive in reducing greenhouse gasses, and should be encouraged, but without the problem being tackled on a wider societal level, such individual actions amount to a mere drop in the bucket as petroleum and auto-industries sabotage wider solutions, and millionaires like Arnold Swartzenegger try to make up for what they apparently lack in their pants by driving around with his fleet of eight gas-guzzling hummers.

One wider societal solution would be converting the United States to electric cars, and making them more efficient with hybrid technology while also cleaning up the grid by converting more power sources to solar and wind generated power. This should be combined with providing much greater subsidies to mass transportation. Yet, the oil industry and other major corporations of the United States, along with their subservient politicians in both the Democrat and Republican Parties, have blocked every major step towards this kind of progress over the last 50 years.

As Alexandra Paul from Bay Watch stated in a PBS interview, “[…] power as in ‘the power structure’ is why we are still using gas in cars.” In the interview she described how GM decided not to re-lease her electric car, nor any other that they had leased out, and instead took all of these working cars back from their customers in 2002 and crushed them. Toyota also took similar actions destroying their electric vehicles in California at the same time. The only reason these companies ever produced and leased these cars was that they were forced to do so by a California law passed in the 1990’s. The law was inspired by the fact that cities like Los Angeles are over-polluted, largely due to combustion engines, and electric cars with energy coming from power plants produce fewer smog and greenhouse gas pollutants. Yet, when these companies were no longer legally forced to put out electric cars in order to do business in California, they stopped doing so and destroyed the ones they had already produced. When electric cars were on the market, they were available only for lease except a few that Toyota agreed to sell under public pressure. So, when the car manufacturers were no longer forced to have their popular electric cars out on the market, they not only stopped producing them, they took back the ones that were actively being leased and destroyed them.

The auto manufacturers claim that these cars were unpopular, and that is why they stopped producing them as soon as they could. Yet, when the cars were being leased there were waiting lists for the cars that were longer than what was available. The various manufacturers, in taking these vehicles off the road and destroying them, did so in order to destroy their very example as an alternative. This lets us in on a very important secret. Through their hostile actions against the electric car they have informed us that they are wed to the interests of the oil companies. This could be, in part, due to the fact that the planned obsolescence of cars with combustion engines is harder to engineer into electric cars. So these cars apparently didn’t break down enough to promote auto sales and auto parts sales. So the auto industry is involved in what amounts to, in terms of ethics, a criminal conspiracy to rip-off consumers and destroy the future of this planet in order to achieve short-term profits.

Just as capitalist ownership is blocking the production of electric cars, so to does capitalist energy ownership block the development and production of wide-scale wind and solar energy. As Monica Hill stated in the Freedom Socialist Newspaper:

“[...] it takes a great deal more labor and energy to harness wind and solar power, at present, than to extract oil. Oil men are clear on the subject. "Renewable energy," said former Exxon Mobil CEO Lee Raymond in the British newspaper Economist, is "a complete waste of money." When Raymond retired last December, Exxon Mobil reported profits of $36.1 billion — the largest in U.S. history. Raymond personally raked in $400 million that year. Clearly, when wind and solar power finally get developed, it won't be thanks to capitalist industry. There is no solution for skyrocketing consumer costs and plunging planetary health as long as control of the energy industry remains in the hands of the monster oil industry and its kindred financial and industrial monopolies.”

With the production of wind and solar, once again, capitalist ownership and capitalist profits are the barriers to the steps needed to save the planet.

Just as big oil profits from the destruction of the planet, they are also a major influence in the drive for war against countries that have eliminated private ownership of oil wealth. U.S. intervention against the popular democratic governments of Venezuela and Bolivia is increasing because these countries have nationalized their energy industries and are using oil profits for things such as education and healthcare, instead of that money going directly into the pockets of multi-national oil corporations. Similarly, oil was nationalized under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and oil revenues were used, in part, to benefit the Iraqi people. Now, under a U.S. imposed puppet government in Iraq, there have been attempts to privatize Iraqi oil fields, but resistance from Iraqi workers has so far prevented it. Once again, the drive for higher corporate oil profits is a destructive force for the world’s people and environment.

While the United States government has no right to intervene in other countries to tell them what to do with their own resources, especially when those countries are making better use of resources than would be done in the hands of U.S. and British oil companies, the U.S. also has no right to destroy the entire planet for the profits of a few oil companies. This, combined with the overwhelming corrupting power big oil has on U.S. politics leads one who is interested in the future of this planet to one inevitable conclusion. The oil industries of the United States need to be nationalized under the democratic control of the people.

While taking the profit out of war and environmental destruction through the nationalization of oil and other energy industries may sound logical to most people, inevitable questions naturally arise in people’s minds.

A common myth promoted by those who have profits to gain through private ownership is that private ownership is more efficient. Yet an honest look shows public ownership is always better. A good example is socialized medicine in Europe, which is much cheaper and better than American healthcare, resulting in giving countries like France, Germany, and the United Kingdom longer life expectancies and lower infant mortalities than the United States. Ending capitalist profit, a form of theft to line the pockets of the wealthy in the first place, is just plain more efficient.

Even public ownership of energy, on a small scale, isn’t without precedent in the United States. Electricity in Los Angeles is publicly owned. Because it is publicly owned, money isn’t being siphoned away in the form of profits going to shareholders and CEO’s. In addition, the bottom line is not the profits of shareholders and CEO’s. As a result, electricity is provided at rates much cheaper than in the rest of California, and it is done in a more environmentally friendly way. In fact, since electricity is publicly owned, people in LA were able to put an initiative on the ballot to shut down their nuclear power plants. The measure succeeded, and people in LA, while they are still forced to pay for the nuclear plants that were constructed and shut down, they still pay less for electricity due to the superior efficiency of ending corporate profit through public ownership.

In the United States, public ownership of the oil industry would not only take away profit incentives for war and environmental destruction, but money made from such enterprises could go towards human and environmental needs such as saving the environment, and towards healthcare and education, as nationalized oil money is used in Venezuela.

Yet Venezuela is also facing a crisis, both because the United States is hostile to what the revolutionary Chavez government is doing there with oil money, but also because there are still capitalists that control much of the Venezuelan economy. Through that control they are able to sabotage other sectors of the economy in their attempts to overthrow the Chavez government. Capitalist interference in food distribution has been one of the most recent acts of sabotage, where capitalists have had food stuffs that they were refusing to put on the shelves for sale. How Chavez deals with this, and other capitalist sabotage of the economy, will determine whether or not the Venezuelan Revolution survives.

Immediately after the Cuban Revolution, Castro and the rest of the Cuban revolutionary leadership was tested in a similar way. The first nationalizations by the Cuban revolutionary leadership were in agriculture. Before the revolution, under the U.S. backed Batista dictatorship, much of the Cuban land was owned by the American capitalist Rockefeller family through the United Fruit Company. Peasants worked for low wages on this land during the on season, and starved during the off-season. Immediately, upon taking power, the Castro government carried out their promise of land reform and United Fruit Company land was expropriated. Resources from sugar production were no longer used to only enrich the Rockefeller family, but instead used to bring food, education, and medicine to peasants and their children. Yet, the United States and American capitalists never forgave this intrusion on capitalist property, and American capitalists sabotaged production in other sectors of the economy, including by refusing to refine oil. In response, the Castro government nationalized the entire economy and announced the building of a socialist economy in Cuba.

This necessity of socialist revolutions to carry out sweeping nationalizations in order to stop capitalist sabotage of the economy was first recognized in 1905 by Leon Trotsky in his work “Results and Prospects” and later developed further in “The Permanent Revolution”.

It is through the Cuban nationalization of the entire economy that the Cuban revolution has not only been able to survive, but they have been able to implement socialist energy policies that are not based on profit, but are instead based on human and environmental needs. While Cuban socialized medicine has brought about a medical system that has produced a higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality than the United States, Cuba’s planned economy has also benefited the environment. It is as result of those policies and priorities that the World Wildlife Fund has said that Cuba is the only country with passing environmental policies in the world. Yet, those policies on one tiny island nation will not be enough to save the planet. As Fidel Castro stated at the U.N. in Rio in 1992:

“An important biological species is in danger of disappearing due to the fast and progressive destruction of its natural living conditions: mankind. We have now become aware of this problem when it is almost too late to stop it. It is necessary to point out that consumer societies are fundamentally responsible for the brutal destruction of the environment.”

Here, Castro is right, and Cuba does serve as a model. Yet, when we look at the Cuban model of socialism, we must pick and choose what aspects are healthy and which aspects should not be copied by other socialist revolutions.

While the Cuban socialism has achieved much, one key ingredient for a healthy society is missing. That ingredient is democracy. A similar observation was made of the Soviet Union in 1918 by German socialist leader Rosa Luxemburg. While being supportive of the Russian revolution, she was at the same time opposed to the dictatorial methods of the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky in the Soviet Union. Rosa Luxemburg instead advocated revolutionary democratic socialism.

The Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, were swept to power in a popular revolution that called for an end to the war with Germany, land reform, and socialism. Besides the betterment this revolution meant for the workers and peasants in general, including access to healthcare and education, giant strides forward were made for oppressed nationalities, Jews, women's rights, and gay rights. Before the revolution, under Czarist rule, Jews were routinely slaughtered in the thousands in government-sponsored pogroms. Peasants were the property of feudal landlords, and huge numbers of drafted young peasants were dying in the inter-imperialist war with Germany. This all ended with the Russian Revolution. In addition, gay rights and the right to abortion were legalized for the first time in any country with the birth of the Soviet Union and backward anti-woman practices such as bride-price and forced marriage were made illegal. Priorities were made of literacy and meeting the basic needs of the people. These were huge advances made by a revolution that had inherited a poor economically backward nation, soon to be further devastated by civil war and the invasion of many imperialist armies.

Yet, Rosa Luxemburg, while praising the advances made by the Russian Revolution, did not excuse the lack of democracy in the Soviet Union. She saw the Marxist concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" in a completely different way than Lenin and Trotsky. She saw this simply as the toiling majority becoming the dictators over the capitalist minority that once held power. For that majority to actually be in charge, however, they would need democratic organs, universal suffrage, and democratic rights. For Lenin and Trotsky, the concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" fit more into bourgeois models of individual dictatorship by those in power. As Rosa Luxemburg states in her 1918 work, the “Russian Revolution”:

“Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only a bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders with inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule [...] a dictatorship, to be sure, but not dictatorship of the proletariat [...].”

A different position by Lenin and Trotsky, more in league with that of Rosa Luxemburg, could have produced a much better and more open society that would have made Stalin's type of rise to power through skullduggery, corruption, and terror within the ranks of the party much more difficult.

Rosa Luxemburg did not see this question as being counterpoised between bourgeois democracy (democracy for the rich as we have in the United States) on the one hand (defended by fake "socialists" who had betrayed socialism and become administrators of capitalist exploitation and war), and dictatorial communism on the other. Instead, she rejected both and fought for a socialist society with nationalized industries where the working class has democratic control. It is this essential banner of revolutionary democratic socialism that must be fully revived in order to not repeat the mistakes of the past, and in order for people to take our movements for environmental survival and socialism seriously and want any part in them.

It was a very unfortunate error of history that the first socialist revolution was carried out with the anti-democratic errors of Lenin and Trotsky. Stalin amplified those errors for his own personal gain. Due to the influence of the Russian Revolution, both morally and financially, the undemocratic errors of the Russian Revolution were copied by most socialist revolutions after, including the Cuban revolution. While recognizing the advantages of the Cuban socialist model over U.S. imposed dictatorship and a corporate controlled economy, it is important not to repeat their undemocratic errors.

Yet, there is nothing inherently democratic about a private economy. As was shown in the example of publicly owned power in LA, with the ability of the people to shut down unsafe nuclear power plants, public ownership is more democratic than private ownership. Private ownership allows a few extremely wealthy people to control not only industrial policies where public input and control is essential for a healthy environment, but their private control of vast financial resources also gives them control of the two established political parties in the United States. Public ownership on a wider scale, with a broadly socialized economy, tied to full democratic rights and universal suffrage, will allow the United States to become a much more democratic country than it is today, and will allow the people of this country to begin the measures needed to save the planet.

Yet, while all of this may seem reasonable, it does beg the question, “How do you propose to gain such a far reaching goal in a country that has an entrenched power structure that is more engaged in privatization than nationalization?” This is the hardest question. It will take the organization of a revolutionary party firmly committed to these goals that is not interested in compromise with the current power establishment. The goal of such a party must be for power, but history has also shown that such parties and movements can become powerful enough at times to scare the power structure into making some of the needed reforms. Even relatively small parties that stick to radical convictions that seem to be on the very fringes can, in times of discontent and sudden revolutionary turmoil, become the majority. As issues worsen in the United States around war, environmental destruction, lack of healthcare, and a possible coming economic collapse, the possibilities of a sea-change in the relatively passive U.S. population becomes more and more likely.

It is with these understandings that the first steps are being taken to establish the Cool Earth Party on the principles of revolutionary democratic socialism, which includes the following demands:

1. Immediate action to save the planet by cutting greenhouse gas emissions!
2. Nationalize the Oil Industry, Other Energy Industries, and the Auto Industry!
3. U.S. Troops Out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, and the Philippines!
4. End US Military Aid to Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Colombia, and All Other Oppressive Governments in the World!
5. End US Imperialism!
6. For Socialized Medicine!
7. No to Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia!
8. For proportional democracy with guaranteed equal time for parties in the media, outlaw big campaign spending, and outlaw electronic voting machines (which are presently used to rig American elections).
9. For Class Struggle Methods to Achieve these Goals, Including Strikes, Mass Protests, Alternative Media, Acts of Conscience and Rebellion Within the US Military, and the Building of a Revolutionary Democratic Socialist Party.
10. Towards Revolutionary Democratic Socialism in the United States!

Such a party will necessarily start small. But, I think, time will tell that such an organization is not only essential for the survival of the planet, it is also an idea that can become popular quickly because it is an idea whose time has come.

Join the Cool Earth Party
http://tribes.tribe.net/coolearth

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posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 27 replies

I hope you enjoy new Rumi (spirirtual)Cd

sina(i'm Love ) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:04:22 GMT

http://www.trueloverumi.com/shop.html

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 0 replies

Comparing Solar Wind and the Mayan Sacred Calendar

DMG/Darkmother.com — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:41:32 GMT

The Mayan Sacred Calendar (the Tzolkin) is said to be a graphic representation of a Logic expressed by star harmonics that unlock doors of consciousness and interdimensional reality. Having translated the Tzolkin into sound, we offer you a comparison between that and actual NASA recorded solar wind.

When the Tzolkin's harmonic Logic is sequenced in the sonic register and played back at high speed, it sounds very much like solar wind recorded by the Voyager spacecraft, also played back at high speed. The primary dif being the Tzolkin is composed of only 13 harmonics and the solar wind has them all.

Check it out:
http://www.DarkMother.com/SolarwindTzolkinComparison

Enjoy! ;)

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 0 replies

Another Real Chance to Shatter Two-Party Political Status Quo?!

SerpentScribe — Wed, 28 May 2008 06:12:20 GMT

I'm up in grounded but purposefully divided Humboldt County and, though I had held out hope for first Kucinich and then Ron Paul and back before the two-party system tried to take the control reigns back in this next plot. What I hope they didn't factor is the degree of fed-upness this public has and that they are informed enough and distrustful of this whole divided situation that will play back into the hands of old politics while promising to do otherwise. This primary season was purposefully dragged out, I only realize we could've realized the real reason for it sooner. As far as the public is concerned now, we have a three-way race within a two-party system. Our best hope to break the entwined ways is to make it a generally multiple race to expose the one faction of the two establishment parties! Cynthia McKinney, the first African-American congresswoman in Georgia now taking on fraud Nader for the Green Party, came to our campus about three weeks ago and, along with local and state candidates, revived the political atmosphere in a hopelessly persistent apathy area. It's true that Nader destroyed the position of the Green Party and re-imposed the two factions of the megasystem, but now we have the perfect chance for a permanent perception changer! No more Ron Pauls or Kucinichs! It was a nice dream, a dream I was ALMOST willing to change my life for, but alas we need to stay more adaptable and find the best chance to bring the power back, that ain't it!! Ron Paul needs to stay in the congress to hold the line, he should see that that's the only way to safegaurd the constitution given the yes-men only symbolically in the middle! He holds the line, Dr. No, that's where he needs to stay as long as possible! Sad, but true. If only Kucinich still had a term, but that's the way things roll this time around.

This is a perception race, a perception race! If we can shatter perceptions of not just the paradigm of gender issues against race issues-- this party, that party as well of course, but nothting new there -- we have to run with our best chance there! It may not be the best thing to run as a Green regardless, but this is the one thing we can reclaim and change directly from the ground up! There are many ways to support a candidate and if there's one left that still has an actual viable chance to be real, it has to be McKinney! She's got the new momentum behind her if we can be adaptable enough to drop the Ron Paul's! My allies and comrades and I got to ask our questions to her in the flesh, and were more than satisfied and finally excited about politics again. We've looked into it our way, and I hope you can check it out and see how much we can really do by combining forces if we can agree with this track-record. Please check out her website, www.runcynthiarun.org or browse her videos on YouTube. It's not too late to swiftly turn around this disappointing result in the executive political realm!

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 2 replies

midnight sun

SHERVIN — Sat, 24 May 2008 18:00:28 GMT

Midnight sun

Dark inward and dark outward
Magnificent is the midnight sun
A touch is a touch
Timeless and tide

So call me
And miss me
Love me
And kiss me

Dead wish
Just a tiny step from reborn
So kill me and carry me
Deliver me
My mother
And my lover
My eternally burning fire

Love&Respect

Shervin May 2008

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 2 replies

life after people

Caroline — Tue, 27 May 2008 22:05:09 GMT

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4939078184096254535&q=life+after+people&ei=WoQ8SN2WEIuAjgLxnrn2Aw&hl=en

posted in GAIA - the earth is alive - 0 replies