.JPG "Earthen Spirituality")
Living within a living, loving planet
Archive for January, 2013
Solstice Gift
Jan 30th
This was my solstice gift whilst I was in Salobrena Spain. I took the photo about 8:25am
Winter Solstice 2012
It has been like this before
Jan 29th
Major climate changes looming
Carolyn Lochhead
Updated 11:10 pm, Sunday, January 27, 2013
http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Major-climate-changes-looming-4227943.php
I’m so tired of hearing “It has been like this before” Usually this statement is followed by 14 million years, 60 million years or other.
Physical history never repeats itself with Gaia. It just cannot. Atmospheric contents, oceanic contents, soil contents and on and on are different now.
All these absurd statements reveal a failure to realise that Gaia is a living being and self-regulates as James Lovelock revealed. As I’ve said before, knowing how a star expands and gets hotter as it approaches an expansion which will in the end cause its demise, Gaia most probably feels it needs to have regular periods of major cooling to keep global temperatures fit for lifeforms that form Gaia’s outer regions – surface. We will never, never progress in understanding how to work in synchronicity with Gaia until we see that our planet is alive and intelligent. There are heaps of implications and connections that could be made on this subject, but I’ll stop here.
It is what you do that Counts
Jan 26th
“The repercussions of our acts — the constructs we create — endure well past the dissolution of our convictions and desires. Our actions exist as living architecture that surrounds the breathing moment. Future generations will dwell in the world we erect, thought by thought, deed by deed.” Phil Rockstroh
“As an example, the fate of the earth’s biosphere and its capacity to sustain human life is being subjected to an unfolding, desperate campaign — craven as it is noxious — in its intentions, scope, and side affects, by the elite of an arrogant order to maintain their grip on privilege and power. By propaganda and coercion, they proceed, with cult-like conviction, on a course of catastrophic folly involving a race to secure and exploit the remaining resources of our ecologically taxed planet (the only planet available to us). If their agendas remain unchecked, the biosphere will be rendered unviable to our species.”
Phil Rockstroh
http://www.nationofchange.org/great-dismal-what-we-speak-becomes-house-we-live-1359211982
This man has a way with words, doesn’t he?
Enough is enough
Jan 21st
Nation of Change How Factory Farming Contributes to Global Warming Ronnie Cummins
http://www.nationofchange.org/how-factory-farming-contributes-global-warming-1358786945
Published: Monday 21 January 2013
“Today, nearly 65 billion animals worldwide, including cows, chickens and pigs, are crammed into Confined Animal Feeding Operations[ CAFOs.] These animals are literally imprisoned and tortured in unhealthy, unsanitary and unconscionably cruel conditions. Sickness is the norm for animals who are confined rather than pastured, and who eat GMO corn and soybeans, rather than grass and forage as nature intended. To prevent the inevitable spread of disease from stress, overcrowding and lack of vitamin D, animals are fed a steady diet of antibiotics. Those antibiotics pose a direct threat to the environment when they run off into our lakes, rivers, aquifers and drinking water.”
“Opponents and skeptics will ask, “What about feeding the world?” Contrary to popular arguments, factory farming is not a cheap, efficient solution to world hunger. Feeding huge numbers of confined animals actually uses more food, in the form of grains that could feed humans, than it produces. For every 100 food calories of edible crops fed to livestock, we get back just 30 calories in the form of meat and dairy. That’s a 70-percent loss.”
Enough is enough.
The Most Daunting Existential Struggle of our Time
Jan 21st
Paraphrased from:
Clive Hamilton in his “Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change”
Taken from Chris Hedges: “The myth of Progress”
http://www.nationofchange.org/myth-human-progress-1358258958
“To emotionally accept impending disaster, to attain the gut-level understanding that the power elite will not respond rationally to the devastation of the ecosystem, is as difficult to accept as our own mortality. The most daunting existential struggle of our time is to ingest this awful truth—intellectually and emotionally—and continue to resist the forces that are destroying us.”
An Update
Jan 19th
I’ve just posted an update to my start page, What is Earthen Spirituality? Please have a look at the new content at the bottom.
Can you Believe it?
Jan 18th
I’m sorry, but I am so amazed at my ignorance. Blasphemy has been a sin in Christianity from the beginning. ” In Britain’s last blasphemy execution, 20-year-old Thomas Aikenhead was executed for the crime in 1697. He was prosecuted for denying the veracity of the Old Testament and the legitimacy of Christ’s miracles.[22]”
I didn’t think such as this had survived to the modern era.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law_in_the_United_Kingdom
Abolition
In January 2008, a spokesman for prime minister Gordon Brown announced that the government would consider the abolition of the blasphemy laws during the passage of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. The government consulted with the Church of England and other churches before reaching a decision. The move followed a letter written to The Daily Telegraph at the instigation of MP Evan Harris and the National Secular Society and was signed by leading figures including Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, who urged that the laws be abandoned.
In March 2008, peers voted for the laws to be abandoned.
On May 8, 2008, the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 abolished the common-law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel in England and Wales, with effect from 8 July 2008.[40][41]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law_in_the_United_Kingdom
Half a degree
Jan 16th
5 January 2013
Climate change: Soot’s role underestimated, says study
By Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent, BBC News
Half a degree
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21033078
The research – http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrd.50171/abstract
“This new study concludes the dark particles are having a warming effect approximately two thirds that of carbon dioxide, and greater than methane.
‘The large conclusion is that forcing due to black carbon in the atmosphere is larger,’ lead author Sarah Doherty told BBC News.
The value the IPCC gave in their 4th assessment report in 2007 is half of what we are presenting in this report – it’s a little bit shocking,”
This is just one of many instances where the IPCC predictions have been challenged as being far too conservative. One could be quite within the realm of reasonable doubt in concluding that global warming is a far greater threat than governments want their citizens to realize. Polar ice, ocean warming, sea level rises, affect of melting permafrost on methane levels and on and on are just a few examples of instances where the IPCC underestimated.
2012 US record breaking hottest annual surface temperature
Jan 15th
2012 Shatters the US Temperature Record. Fox, Watts, and Spencer Respond by Denying Reality
Posted on 14 January 2013 by dana1981
http://www.skepticalscience.com/2012-us-temp-record-fox-denial.html#89622
“Big oil will loose trillions of dollars in unusable reserves if climate change is accepted, so it’s not surprising they will use any weapon to discredit AGM.”
I had not considered oil reserves and their value.
Update of Greenland Ice Sheet Mass Loss
Jan 14th
Update of Greenland Ice Sheet Mass Loss: Exponential?
26 December 2012
James Hansen and Makiko Sato
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20121226_GreenlandIceSheetUpdate.pdf
In this paper, Hansen and Sato point out that the IPCC rise in sea level projections need updating. As I understand it, the models used in the past did not take into consideration the possible – Hansen and Sato suggest that it is probable- non-linear increase in ice sheet loss due to human contributions to the rising global temperature due the greenhouse effect. Sea level rises will most probably be far greater than the 1 meter mentioned by the IPCC. Sadly, it will be too late to do anything about it when enough data is collected to convince reluctant sceptics. I suggest that powers that refuse to change the status quo understand this and will at that time just shrug their shoulders and say, in effect, “Too late to do anything now, so let’s just keep on keeping on the way we have been and enjoy what we have while we have it.” Of course, only the 1%ers will be enjoying their lives whilst the rest of us waste away in cold and hunger. You don’t think this can happen?
Of course, what has not been mentioned is the question: How will Gaia maintain stable, life enabling global temperature without glaciers and ice sheets? The Gaia Theory plainly points out that the earth should be a lot warmer due to the expanding heat from an expanding sun over the last 5 billion years. We need to work hard to understand how Gaia operates and cooperate rather than destroy her enabling structures and global health measures.
“A crucial question is how rapidly the Greenland (or Antarctic) ice sheet can disintegrate in response to global warming. Earth’s history makes it clear that burning all fossil fuels would cause eventual sea level rise of tens of meters, thus practically wiping out thousands of cities located on global coast lines. However, there seems to be little political or public interest in what happens next century and beyond, so reports of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) focus on sea level change by 2100, i.e., during the next 87 years.”
“…future sea level rise of greatest concern is that from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which has the potential to reach many meters. Hansen (2005) argues that, if business-as-usual increase of greenhouse gases continue throughout this century, the climate forcing will be so large that non-linear ice sheet disintegration should be expected and multi-meter sea level rise not only possible but likely.”
“Perceived authority2 in the case of ice sheets stems from ice sheet models used to simulate paleoclimate sea level change. However, paleoclimate ice sheet changes were initiated by weak climate forcings changing slowly over thousands of years, not by a forcing as large or rapid as human-made forcing this century.”
“The increasing Greenland mass loss in Fig. 1 can be fit just as well by exponentially increasing annual mass loss, a behavior that Hansen (2005, 2007) argues could occur because of multiple amplifying feedbacks as an ice sheet begins to disintegrate. A 10-year doubling time would lead to 1 meter sea level rise by 2067 and 5 meters by 2090. The dates are 2045 and 2057 for 5-year doubling time and 2055 and 2071 for a 7-year doubling time.”