Jellyfish Loop

You've heard intermittent reports of jellyfish invasions here and there in the world over the last years. Sometimes even 'giant jellyfish' invasions. The efflorescence of these animals (I believe they are technically 'animals') is commonly ascribed to the warming of the ocean, and there has been some concern voiced that jellies might take over the seas as they continue to warm.

Here's a new angle though: jellyfish, in their continuous vertical wanderings, are mixing upper and lower layers of ocean water, thus boosting the ocean's absorption of CO2, and this may account for the fact that the ocean has 'sunk' more CO2 than had been expected and predicted.

Interesting! It seems the jellyfish is embodying and performing a Gaian stabilization function, amounting to a natural feedback loop to soak up more CO2 when the sea temperatures rise!

We haven't paid much attention to the jellyfish, but I'm sure we will in the future- and not just as a plentiful potential food, or because they boost the ocean's CO2 sink, but because in one jelly species, there's a gene-set giving it, well, immortality. Specifically, this jellyfish, once it has matured and mated and reproduced, can revert to a juvenile stage and start all over again. I think I might like that! I guess we'd better start colonizing some planets before we implant that gene in ourselves...

Solar: Future Dwellings

We talk alot about local food production, but here in New Mexico, as in much of the world, we have cold winters and hot dry summers; so if we want to move to local food production, we are going to need a lot of greenhouses. So where are they? Greenhouses, after all, are not space-age technology, like photovoltaics, yet they capture sunlight and warmth and retain humidity with great efficiency. Amory Lovins, who spoke in Santa Fe last week, grows bananas at 2200 meters in his Rocky Mountain greenhouse.

Let's imagine the residential dwelling of the future: with a lean-to greenhouse on the southern exposure, and solar photovoltaic energy production. A home that produces energy and food for it's occupants. Why not?

HOME - The Movie

HOME is a beautiful documentary of our planet Earth and the impacts of humanity on it's life systems. The cinematography- by the  renowned Yann Arthus-Bertrand, is gorgeous,  the narrative excellent, the soundtrack very cool. The film is like an offspring of Koyanisqatsi and An Inconvenient Truth, with some edgy Buddha Bar thrown in.  

All the major elements of human depredations and their ramifications are covered, including critical natural  feedback loops. It's a dire appraisal, but an epilogue offers signs of hope that we may rise to the challenge.

Watch this beauty online in high quality full screen format here.

Bailout total 12.8 trillion

Bloomberg today reported the total cost of the bailout so far to be 12.8 trillion dollars. (story)

We are definitely in uncharted territory now! This is a near incomprehensible number. It is, for example, the number of miles travelled by light in 2 years, at 186,000 miles per second.

Or consider this: to give away this much money, you'd have to give away a million dollars a day, every day, for 35,000 years; you'd have to have started when we were hiding in caves from saber-toothed tigers to reach 12.8 trillion.

It's also three times the current value of all the gold in the world.

Who knew we were so rich! We really could have made education first-rate and free, provided universal affordable health-care, and switched to 100% green energy years ago! Who knew?!

Steps toward an energy solution: Redefine Useful Work and Wealth

a thoughtful post by George Mobus over at Question Everything- something we need to think about - SM

"...Suppose we define useful work as that work which allows society to maintain a steady flow of exergy (net energy available to do work) at a level sufficient to maintain a steady-state population at a reasonable level of material comfort with equitable distribution of that material wealth. In other words, work which maintains a stable social environment without growth that robs non-human parts of the Ecos. This does not preclude development of new and better forms of material wealth, increasing the true satisfaction of every human, since that might be achieved through science and technology — doing more with less.

"What it does mean is that the total population of the planet must remain at the carrying capacity, the sustainable number that can live in balance with the rest of nature for as long as we can envision. It means obtaining energy from truly renewable sources rather than fossil fuels (which establishes an upper bound on the size of a sustainable population). And it means identifying the kinds of products and services that sustain human well being rather than self-indulgent hedonism. It means abolishing the notions of rich and poor. It means abolishing the notion of profits and interest as we understand them now. It means recognizing our mental, intellectual, and individual wisdom limits and establishing a form of governance that will prevent those who would succumb to irrational desires (like the desire to get rich!) from doing so. We already have laws that prevent us from doing direct harm to one another. We will need laws that prevent us from doing indirect harm as well.."

Read Dr. Mobus's full article here

Time Out for Play

related:
Cetacea: Mind-Bending Theories About the Planet's “Other” Intelligent Life

Google Earth Views: Greenland and Arctic

Remote Exploration #4

I was poking around the ocean floor with the new Google Earth 5.0 the other day, in the area southeast of the Azores, and I found this strange, what... formation? The horizontal border of the grid near the bottom of the image is over 100 miles long. There's nothing else like it in the region.

Click here to see a larger picture.




Now, I know that some freak geological formations can resemble purposeful structure. This seems to be an extreme case however. And very large, roughly 13,000 square miles according to the Google Earth "ruler".
A discussion has begun already over at the Google Earth forums on this feature, several people have stumbled on it apparently, like me, since the release of Google Earth 5.0 featuring the ocean floors. If you have any thoughts on this, post comments here.


Update Feb 20: This feature is catching a lot of attention... see "Has Atlantis Been Found Off The Coast of Africa?"


What else may await further armchair exploration? As the data sets become more fine-grained, determined explorers are certain to find things of interest. I found some sunken dock structures and ships in an ancient megalithic port, now submerged. (In shallow waters near some coastal areas the imagery is good enough to see these details underwater).

Remember that the imagery used in Google Earth, Mars, and Sky, has not yet necessarily been seen by humans, let alone examined in detail; discoveries are happening already, and many more await... have you looked into the Google Sky deep-field yet?



Related updates:

Dutch schoolteacher finds new class of astronomical object with Galaxy Zoo
Hanny's Blog / Galaxy Zoo blog discussion
GalaxyZoo

Google Earth reveals fish trap made from rocks 1,000 years ago off British coast

Obamanos!

We did it! And after a decade of obstruction and denial, we will finally have in Washington a smart, future-oriented administration which will be an ally in the urgent effort to get our civilization on a path to a sustainable future. With support from the grass roots all the way up to the White House, we as a society will be able to move ahead very quickly, and none too soon, considering the looming threats. This is a time to celebrate, and also to redouble our efforts on the ground and in support of the coming Obama administration.
Obama's announced plan: In the short term, tap every available national resource to reduce our dependence on foreign oil as quickly as possible, while rescinding tax breaks for Big Oil and using the money to provide energy rebates to consumers. For the long term, a crash program to develop alternative energy technologies rapidly, providing millions of non-outsource-able jobs, so that in the next decade the US is energy independent and a leader in the coming green boom.

(see more Obama video statements on energy and environment here.


"Hopes soared in Europe on Wednesday for renewed momentum toward global cooperation on climate change following the election of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States..." (story)

Beyond Crisis: Local Food and Fuel at Ecoversity

As I write this, the stock markets are in free-fall, with the Dow down 2000 points this week. Wherever the bottom is, all agree the outlook is bleak for years out; the rebound after the dot-com crash was quick enough so that we didn't have to change our basic habits of consumption, energy, debt, and wealth inflation. This time the story is very different, and it is likely that by the time things stabilize for a return to growth we won't be back to "normal", but will be in a new world.

This fall, Ecoversity is focussing on two essential elements of the next world, local food and energy production, most particularly at home on the Ecoversity 'campus' in Santa Fe. Our alternative energy park has expanded over the summer. We have some new wind turbines set up, and we have solar installations as well, for solar heating, solar photovoltaics, and solar mirror. And we have our micro and macro demonstration setups for algae-culture- the biological production of food and fuel from sunlight and CO2.

On Oct 19th, we have two "mammoth" mules coming to turn the big field (bring your kids to see!). We'll be planting winter wheat, and also testing the local potential of some promising bioremediation techniques. By next summer we expect to be demonstrating soil development and remediation, and micro-agro strategies which are appropriate for Northern New Mexico.

The economic ride might get rough, but keep this in mind: the basics - food and fuel. We hope that Ecoversity's demonstration sites will help you and our community feel confident of our ability to ultimately supply ourselves with food and fuel during changing times.

Green Boom Coming

This coming green boom will dwarf the dot-com technology boom of the 90's; partly because it is driven by necessity as well as profits, and that means foundation and government support, but mainly because it will touch every aspect of our lives- what we eat, where we live and where we travel, what we drive, do for a living, produce, how we produce it, how we distribute, how we package, transport, and dispose of everything we make. New energy sources of course are a huge thing, ranging from photovoltaics to wind to waves to algae to geothermal to microbes making petroleum- and on and on, limited only by our ingenuity. Everything will be tried. As is the case with energy, the winners will be many and diverse- because all of these different solutions will need to be deployed to complete the picture, not just one or two.

We are looking at a once-in-a-lifetime transformation throughout all areas of human activity,  comparable to the industrial revolution but more rapid,  and more pervasive than the IT revolution. All goods and practices that pollute and degrade the biosphere will be candidates for rapid replacement by zero-waste, zero-emissions, zero-impact solutions. The current infrastructure is industrial-age. There's so much to replace and improve it'll be like shooting ducks in a barrel. For a new generation it will be the Big Game where fortunes are made and ingenuity and boldness are rewarded.

And finally, investors of all kinds will be wanting to get in on the action. Funds that get you in on the boom in a savvy way will take off, and new alignments and fortunes will be made in green investing. 
In the first period, coming to an end this year, Europeans have taken the lead- Germany particularly for solar, and for example the Danes for wind. But the collossal R&D potential of the United States is not manifested- yet- it's just beginning.
You can read more about the things I've referenced at Ecoversity's News and Links page
And you can watch video clips of some of these new solutions at Ecoversity's TV page.

Further reading:

Will Green Technologies Exceed the Internet as the "Mother of All Markets"? (article)

"We're talking about nothing less than the reindustrialization of the whole planet."
Venture Capitalist, John Doerr

The New Survivalism

I sometimes forget that the New York Times likes to hide certain articles in the Fashion & Style section which, had they appeared in the news section, might be judged overly anxiety-producing.

I didn't find this one until alerted by the User is Content blog a few weeks after it first appeared. Right at the outset of Alex Williams' "Duck and Cover- the New Survivalism", we read that Barton M. Biggs, the former chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley, writes in his new book "Wealth, War and Wisdom," that people should "assume the possibility of a breakdown of the civilized infrastructure."

"Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food," Mr. Biggs writes. "It should be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think Swiss Family Robinson. Even in America and Europe there could be moments of riot and rebellion when law and order temporarily completely breaks down."

That's pretty scary. As you might guess from the emphasis on 'riot and rebellion' rather than say, floods and famine, Mr. Biggs represents the 'conservative' survivalists, the more traditional ones. But the article makes a point of the emergence of a new left-wing and green survivalist contingent, who are more concerned with the floods and famine side.

Williams quotes Alex Steffen, executive editor of WorldChanging.com
"The 'where do we land when climate change gets crazy?’ question seems to be an increasingly common one..." such questions have "really gone mainstream."

Greens like us all want to live locally and sustainably, generating our own energy, food, and warmth by the sun and natural systems, in harmony with nature and the cycles of life. We don't flourish among mammon and condos and cars, we want to be with Nature and Natural Spirituality, that is what nourishes us. We want to make our Edens. We know it can be done. We don't really want most of the things this ADD society holds as desirable anyway. We want simpler, deeper lives, naturally enriched.
We know we can do it. But we are all part of a sprawling matrix of accumulated connections to many other agendas, and few of us have broken free and begun their Edens. The thought that this kind of living may in the future be the only tolerable way of living, or even the only way of living- period, well, this might just get the ball rolling a little faster.