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Living within a living, loving planet
Posts tagged A living Universe
From the Archives – A New Story
Sep 15th
A New Story
There have been a few “deep feeling” people who have called for a “new story.” There can be no doubt that we desperately need a new story. All major religions advocate “love.” and “Peace.” But unfortunately, they seek “God” to bring peace. Part of the new story, is that Peace and love must come from within each of us. Also, they are not what we can “have” or “obtain” but what we “are.” So, why do we have problems? We are taught that we are helpless and must invoke assistance from “God” out there somewhere. This is “the pollution of the ages.” Further, it is “Earth energy” that nourishes and sustains us yet we are alienated due to basic beliefs that don’t keep their promises. We now have runaway Global warming where the positive feedback is increasing at an increasing rate. We either cooperate, and very soon, or suffer unimaginable consequences. This is not a Henny Penny or chicken licken story either – just do the maths!
Sky: 10 January, 2019
Tragic?
Apr 28th
Beyond belief?
“In Madrid, the father looks up, and then replies to his son: “That’s the Milky Way. Don’t you remember learning about it?” “Yeah…,” the boy answers. “I just didn’t know that you could actually see it.” The father looks back up, then removes his glasses. They both stare and stare.” David Abram – In the Ground of Our Unknowing
Tipping Points
Dec 23rd
“Policymakers “have severely underestimated” the risks of ecological “tipping points” – feedback mechanisms that could occur if certain thresholds are passed – a new study has found. Research published in the journal Science suggests that 45% of potential environmental collapses are interrelated and could amplify one another, highlighting ‘how overstressed and overlapping natural systems are combining to throw up a growing number of unwelcome surprises’, the Guardian writes. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/20/risks-of-domino-effect-of-tipping-points-greater-than-thought-study-says
Just 19% of the 30 types of ecosystem transitions studied were happening in isolation.”
Carbon Brief Daily | 20/12/2018
There is no “could occur” about it. The tipping point has occurred and the feedback mechanisms are spinning away with runaway increases in greenhouse gasses. At the moment, greenhouse gasses are increasing at a rate of over 50% per decade and this rate is also increasing.
http://www.earthenspirituality.com/tippingpoints/tippingpoints.pdf
First Fern Genome Shows Unique Bacterial Partnership
Aug 21st
Discover magazine
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2018/07/02/first-fern-genomes/#.W3vFpc5KiM_
First Fern Genome Shows Unique Bacterial Partnership
This article and research further supports James Lovelock and the Daisyworld hypothesis. Question? What probable action that we know of will lower the CO2 such that we won’t skip another ice age? If we don’t have another ice age, then what property or force that we know of will curtail the non-linear increase in CO2.
My previous post about the CO2 and methane being produced under and around thawing permafrost lakes will increase CO2 and with rising oceans, there will be more swamp and more vegetation under water which will increase CO2 and methane from rotting plants. Why should we not be very, very afraid on behalf of Gaia?
“Though it’s little, the tiny fern Azolla may have changed the world 50 million years ago. Fossil records from the Arctic suggest that these fast-growing, carbon-sequestering ferns removed enough carbon dioxide from Earth’s atmosphere to cool the then-greenhouse globe and allow today’s polar ice caps to form.
In more recent Earth history, rice farmers in Asia have been using Azolla as a natural fertilizer for over 1,000 years. Nostoc azollae, a cyanobacterium species that lives inside Azolla leaves, captures nitrogen from the air and converts it into a form that the ferns — and rice plants — can use.
Many plants have symbiotic relationships with the bacteria living inside them, but Azolla’s partnership with Nostoc is unique because the bacterium lives inside the fern for its whole life and transfers from parent to child when Azolla reproduces. It’s a microbial inheritance that most plants don’t get — they must start fresh with bacteria from the environment.
Evidence hinted that the Azolla fern and its cyanobacterium partner might share a long evolutionary past together. Unraveling the details of their evolutionary history was one reason Li and his team wanted to sequence the Azolla genome.”
“Ferns may have been overlooked partly because they have a reputation for massive genomes that would be expensive to sequence — the average fern has about four times the genetic information of a human — and because the benefits of sequencing fern genomes is not immediately obvious compared to sequencing the genomes of other plants, like agricultural crops.”
“Comparing the new Azolla genome with the previously-sequenced Nostoc genome confirms that the fern and the cyanobacterium have been partners for as long as 100 million years, evolving and branching into new species together. From experiments with the fern’s genome, Li’s team found that the cyanobacterium’s ability to capture nitrogen from air keeps the fern nourished when other nitrogen sources aren’t available.”
“Li’s team studied the fern genomes to track down the origin of the natural pesticides and found evidence that in Salvinia, the pesticide protein might have come from bacteria rather than from plant ancestors. Transferring genes between species is fairly common among bacteria (this is what makes bacteria so good at resisting antibiotics) but rare in more complex life, like plants.”
We ARE the Planet
Aug 8th
“Professor Johan Rockström, a co-author of the new paper from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, told BBC News. ‘What we are saying is that when we reach 2C of warming, we may be at a point where we hand over the control mechanism to Planet Earth herself.’”
Carbon Brief Daily | 07/08/2018
I don’t seem to be on the same page here. When did anyone ever dare to think that (1) That we were ever “in control” of Earth’s survival mechanisms and (2) That we have anything to “hand over” to “Planet Earth.” We and all our brethren are first and foremost “Earthlings.” We are not “on” this planet, we ARE the planet – inseparable.
We have not “lost” our connection. That’s impossible. We have either lost consciousness of it or perhaps never were conscious of being part of the, so to speak, eyes, ears, nose and throat of our greater beingness, the marvellous planet Earth.
More Lake Effect Snow
Jan 8th
More Lake Effect Snow
8 January, 2018
Weather is a more immediate effect of changes in the climate. You can’t have one without the other. On the other hand, it is foolish to choose a cold day and then say – “there, you see, the Earth is NOT getting warmer.” It is fair to note that extreme weather events are occurring more frequently. Two major changes have occurred over the last 2,000 years. One, the human footprint has expanded almost beyond belief and two, the CO2 content in the air has increased proportionately. Our species has never experienced this level of CO2. Not helpful is that our measuring instruments were designed to measure inanimate objects on an inanimate planet. No wonder we have so little understanding as to how the Earth “works.” Our living planet’s behaviour is unpredictable just like people’s behaviour is unpredictable. We don’t destroy the medical profession because they cannot always accurately predict whether our prescription will “work” or not. Finally, we must take into account that millions of dollars, pounds etc. have been awarded to “scientists?” to falsify statistics and create “fake” news. Is it any wonder that there are so few tears shed over the destruction of Nature?
JANUARY 04, 2018 | 11:40 AM
A ‘PERFECT STORM’: EXTREME WINTER WEATHER, BITTER COLD, AND CLIMATE CHANGE
World-renowned climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann explains why the bitter cold and snowy conditions gripping the US are “an example of precisely the sort of extreme winter weather we expect because of climate change.”
The Real Problem
Jul 28th
I totally disagree with this hypothesis. “Like Exxon, Utilities knew about Climate Change risks decades ago” See my post on Facebook yesterday, 27 July. Climate change inaction is caused by: (1) Establishment conditioning views our planet as fodder for the taking with no intelligence, wisdom nor consciousness. (2) This conditioning has been reinforced by Jewish and Christian doctrine according to Genesis 1:26. (3) These two circumstances were exploited by Capitalism and expressed with the commandments; “profit first” and “grow or die” (4) All of the above were supported by the failure of our species to develop an “enoughness” gene. The lack of this ability is expressed by what we call greed revealed as anti-social behaviour bordering on the psychopathic. Lastly, from this state of being in the world, we will not honour and protect that which we do not love and most of the rich and powerful do not view Earth as lovable.
“Climate change is an existential risk that could abruptly end human civilisation because of a catastrophic “failure of imagination” by global leaders to understand and act on the science and evidence before them.”
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-07-26/a-failure-of-imagination-on-climate-risks/
Looking for Consciousness
Jun 21st
“Looking for consciousness in the world is a bit like studying a movie, looking for the source of its light. Nowhere would we find it. The light is not in the movie. The movie is made of light.”
The Reality of Consciousness by Peter Russell http://www.peterrussell.com/Odds/RealityConsc.pdf
Similarly, one cannot find “the self” because what we are is not a thing “out there” to be found. We are what we are looking for. Also, there is nobody doing the looking for again there is only “the seeing, the hearing, the sensing, etc.” and nobody doing it. Many call this unity consciousness. I call it being lived by Earth or Gaia. All we can detect is the consciousness of Gaia. Cosmic consciousness is too far removed and may be set aside as pure speculation and most probably unknowable. Gaia consciousness can be known and realised because it is we; there is no other.
An Ozymandian Nightmare Part 11
Jun 15th
An Ozymandian Nightmare Part 11
What’s with Ozymandias?
Roman-era historian Diodorus Siculus, who described a statue of Ozymandias, more commonly known as Rameses II (possibly the pharaoh referred to in the Book of Exodus). Diodorus reports the inscription on the statue, which he claims was the largest in Egypt, as follows: “King of Kings Ozymandias am I. If any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my work.” (The statue and its inscription do not survive, and were not seen by Shelley; his inspiration for [the sonnet] “Ozymandias” was verbal rather than visual.) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/238972 View Shelley’s sonnet here.
This paper is a commentary on the book; Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth
The book is Edited by George Wuerthner, Eileen Crist, and Tom Butler. Published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology in collaboration with Island Press, 2014, Washington D.C.
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Conservation in No-Man’s-Land
Claudio Campagna and Daniel Guevara provide a well prepared rebuttal of the claims of the HCCs. [Human Centred Conservationists]
Claudio Campagna is a Senior Research Zoologist affiliated with the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Daniel Guevara is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
They pose that the “deepest issue – the real crisis – is that we do not have the concepts or language for expressing, or explicitly understanding, the intrinsic value of Nature; nor, therefore, for articulating its violation.”
I fully agree and add that the reason for this is primarily that we do not realise that we are the Earth. We are Nature. We use tools designed to measure “things”, mechanical objects and use the results to pronounce about the hows and whys of a living being. Further, Earth is an immense and intelligent living being. We treat Earth the way we do because we do not love the Earth, our higher self. Unfortunately for Earth, including all life therein, we speak of the planet as “it” and consider “it” as out there.
Our religious traditions were formed by people utterly devoid of scientific knowledge, steeped in hubris, and dedicated totally toward establishing principles approved by their personal God. Next they set up a hierarchy of special men who were imbued with the authority to speak “for” God. Following was a kicker message devised to frighten the masses into submission by pronouncing that their God would punish them for disobeying the opinions of their God’s spokespersons on Earth. Even into modern times, we have millions who live in fear of damnation and disapproval of their God.
Sadly, when so many people believe that humans are especially fabricated in God’s image and then thrust upon the Earth to, as written in Genesis 1:28 “…Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
Actually, the domestication of the Earth underpins the religious foundation of both Christianity and Judaism.
How could we ever expect a population from Christian and Jewish religious Sunday schools to love and cherish the Earth when they have been taught that their God has given the Earth to humans to subdue?
Keeping the Wild
Mar 21st
Keeping the Wild
This book might be a great help in understanding why humans are destroying Nature. The quote below makes a connection that has gone over my head until a few days ago.
“From time immemorial, just as today, the underclass and the powerless have been forcibly limited from accessing resources for their own material advantage. It is thus injustice toward the more-than-human world – stripping it into being-for and value-for people (“resources”) that constitutes the foundation of social injustice and inequality.” Eileen Crist in “Keeping the Wild”
This book might be a great help in understanding why humans are destroying Nature. Is it not rather bizarre and crazy-making that whilst we, as just one species of many, have given ourselves the right to slash and burn, poison and desecrate as we choose whilst energetic and physical essence that we depend on for our very existence has no rights whatsoever?