Man, get with the times.  The solution to these problems has been known about for years.

More seriously, I've heard tell that Afghanistan is something like 'the lithium king.'  I cannot help but notice that nobody seems to be in a big hurry to defeat the Talliban and get the hell out of there.  One has to wonder if these two things are related.

Many people will have a difficult time understanding this, but it becomes increasingly difficult to vacuum out the last of anything.  In fact, it approaches being infinitely difficult in mathematical terms.

This is important because it explains why CO2 is a trace gas in our atmosphere (currently around 400 parts per million.)  Biological systems need carbon to build mass and they are exceedingly good at getting it else they would not be competitive against other organisms.

One might note from the graphic I put up that the amount of carbon sequestered in sediment and rock formations is on the order 75,000,000 gigatons compared to on the order 40,000 for all conceivably available (including all fossil fuel reserves) vs. on the order 2000 reasonably available in the biosphere.

Basically marine creatures which form shells have been trying (fairly effectively) to kill the earth for a very long time.  But for volcanos and acidic conditions in karst geologies, they may have succeeded (except they would die before they did so.)

It seems a fairly reasonable suggestion that at times in the history of earth, the available CO2 for building hydro-carbons was much greater.  At that time plants probably competed for water more than for carbon.  In fact, one 'proxy' for historical CO2 levels is to look at the size of the pores that plants have to try to obtain what little CO2 is floating around.

This is important to conceptualize because it means that today's plant life will have relatively little difficulty gulping down minor 'imbalances' in CO2 'pollution' caused by human activities.  In particular, the more CO2 available, the faster it will be gobbled up.


Beijing is like a pristine alpine meadow compared to Chennai!  I had the mixed fortune of being in Beijing during significant rains, however, and that cleared things up significantly.  The pollution on the day I got there was shocking (to today's younger generation of Americans who don't remember the bad-old-days.)  I was sick from eating fast-food frog on the second day, then it rained and made things pretty OK for the next three weeks of my stay.  Also, the totalitarian govt was making ready for the Olympics, and the thing about totalitarian governments is that they can be more immediately effective in such efforts.

I think that more Catholics than one might think are not buying Bergoglio's bullshit.  As near as I can see, many American Catholics are perfectly happy to pick and choose church stuff which makes sense to them and stuff which does not, and that has been going on for a long time.  Some Catholics seem genuinely stunned at the hard left turn and new-age eco weirdness their church has taken and are saying things like "I want my church back."  It's probably not just Catholics either.  Some churches are actually given financial breaks by government for preaching green religion to their parishioners so I read.  Very interesting even if it is not terribly wide-spread.

http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/19/maryland-county-to-churches-preach-environmentalism-and-get-a-tax-break/

Some people are scratching their heads and wondering aloud whether Bergoglio is not actually trying to chase people out of Catholasism, or at least some notable segments of the flock.  I find such a suggestion fascenating and worth more exploration.

"There is always never room for one more."
                                                  - Mother Theresa
                                                  - Pope Frances (aka, the wannabe anti-christ.)

Most other estimates are going to be in the ballpark.  Sorry to not be able to find a more high resolution image.  Note the UNEP label on this

There are many such charts showing the 'perturbations' in the budget.  The main reason for doing so is to give an excuse to hide the somewhat modest nature of the human induced component.  At least that is my suspicion.

Ah, here's another:



Note that, while out of the UN (at least in part), it is pretty old.  Most of the newer graphics are of the 'perturbation' variety so it seems.  Funny that.

Trees grow back, and in the blink of the eye on geological time scales.

Further, if one cuts a tree, the areas that it was shading gets hit with solar radiation and other things will grow while waiting for the tree to grow back.

Using plants as energy sources (firewood, bio-fuel, food, etc) is one of the most tight-looped methods of harnessing 'solar energy' possible.  The main reason it is vilified is that it threatens other energy interests which are more easy to consolidate into corporate control.

If you've already consolidated most of the global fossil fuel reserves, would you like the price that end-users pay to be:

  a) higher
  b) lower

Generally speaking, 'austerity' helps achieve the 'a)' selection whether one is talking food, energy, health care, intellectual property, etc, etc.  We can expect to see a lot more of it as earth moves toward toward a more 'globalized' form with multi-national corporations consolidating control of all means of production and a more centralized power structure dictating global operation.

I heard and interesting analysis about Erdogan some time ago.  Edmonds is as close to a domain expert as anyone, and Corbett is characteristically informed in my opinion.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxvPfWkYyUo

tldw:  Nobody likes Erdogan and are making ready to punt him.

Not mentioned was Erdogan's behaviour with the MV Mavi Marmara incident.  It was rumored that Erdogan made a credible threat of war against Israel, and from what I could observe, it is not unlikely that he at least came pretty close.  If so, I could imagine a) most people feeling that he is to much of a loose cannon, and b) there might be a desire for some retribution.

Edmonds claims that the Kurds will be used for a time then discarded.  It seems to me that strategically from the standpoint of the West, it might be awfully handy to have a somewhat friendly and effectively autonomous Kurdish stronghold in Eastern Turkey.  Maybe even as formal a 'Kurdistan' as practical even.  The reason for this is that it could be a chronic infection which could cause continuous grief for Iran, Iraq, and Syria.  If that were to be attempted, doing so in association with getting rid of Erdogan and re-evaluating the scope of the NATO arrangements with Turkey could make some sense.

Get used to it.  There is a major push to get a 'one world religion' going so we're going to be seeing this shit everywhere for the next few years (if the internet retains it's present form at least.)  Just like the flat-earth psyop, tranny nonsense, etc.  The silver lining, though, is that once you realize this it can help you pick out who the 'shills' are, the form of the basic strategies of TPTB in this operation, etc.  Your post is interesting BTW...

I have a hypothesis that in a basically corrupt corp/gov environment you will find a relatively high percentage of people in key positions who have leveragable character flaws.  The simple reason for this is that such people are selected specifically for this reason.  While I started to develop this hypothesis prior, the story about the 14 degenerates at NASA who were buying pedo material out of Eastern Europe but were shielded and not fired by NASA really added to my suspicions in part because I had been also trying to figure out how 'scientists' could be induced to take such obscene liberties with climate data.

Anyway, after a period of time of stuffing key positions with perverts, you end up with an organization which is functioning inefficiently generally (which is somewhat desirable in a lot of ways) and pretty much non-functional for your goals if you purge your functionaries.  What to do?  One possibility would be to 'normalize' the perversion so 'your guys' can remain in place.  I wonder if that is what we are seeing with the recent push to add a 'P' to the now-normalized 'LGBT' tag.

Why you would not see it in Europe I have no idea, but as far as I can tell there are no shortage of degenerates over there either.  Indeed, it almost seems like it is more normalized there already thus obviating the need for a formal special interest group (and we here on this side of the pond are chronically painted with the 'prude' label.)

I'd gladly drive an electric car if it worked for my needs, and I expect that eventually they will.  I have a truck which I use when I need to, but drive my small car when I can.  A self-driving car would be even better.  This has nothing to do with the phony-baloney global warming fraud, peak oil fear-mongering, or the idea that it 'costs nothing' (which means that someone else is picking up the tab to subsidize your own lazy ass.)

I would rather the necessary R&D happened organically rather than through coercive and cronyist taxes on fuel and what-not.  If it takes longer for developments to occur without this extra money (which politicians and their sponsors inevitably use as a giant slush-fund) that just means that there is no really significant need for a solution in the near term.  In the mean time, internal combustion engines are totally fine with me to.

Better that than 'a long way the wrong way' or so far that I don't have enough gas to get back when I figure out that I've taken a wrong turn.  That's the way I see it and it seems to work fine for me.

I know how that goes man!  Fortunately for me I make it a point to hardly ever 'know' anything but rather just consider something to be highly probable or highly improbable...or more usually somewhere in between of course.

Sounds like an awesome place.  I'll bet it's loaded with so called 'Syrian refugees' right?

That solution would not break my heart.  I imagine that people who find themselves physically situated and owning property in a region which was not politically and culturally to their liking could swap with counterparts in other areas.  If the breakup were peaceful and clean at least.  If not, all bets are off.

I am at least pretty close to an area which some would like to form into a state called 'Jefferson' which includes parts of Northern California and Southern Oregon which find themselves at odds culturally with the more metropolitan areas of the respective states (not to mention the Feds who I consider to do almost nothing worthwhile for us and cause a lot of problems.)  I'd go a step farther and wish it to become the nation-state of Jefferson.  It seems to me that if there were a peaceful break-up of the United States, the resulting regions could maintain enough cohesion to retain the operation of a nuclear arsenal for common defensive purposes.  In that way we could pretty much ignore threats from 'emerging superpowers' abroad and focus on our own problems more locally.

Mostly just watching.

Thanks as always, Coleman, for the info on the PKK vs. PYD/YPG.  It's these little tid-bits that one can dive down into for more detail once tipped off.  I suspect that 'the Kurds' will be a big factor in what comes next for the region.

I've heard going back to the setup for the Gulf-II at least that Israel was providing significant support for 'the Kurds' and had fairly friendly and deep relations even back then.  And, of course, the 'better Middle East' has a 'Kurdistan' which jumps out and grabs the eye due to it's size (and geographical overlap with the current boundaries of important players in the region.)  Thoughts?  Info?

In the various run-downs I've read (in the course of tapping out this post) I don't see any info about the ties between the various Kurdish factions and Israel.  It's possible that there are few or they are gone, or that it is not in the interest of the commentators to discuss them (most leave fairly vacant the relationship between these factions and the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Russia, etc, as well, and I have a hard time imagining that plenty of support or anti-support from these players exist.)

FIFY

Fine, but that's not what you said.  Or what I said for that matter.

I cannot teach you if you are not prepared to learn.  LOL.


Maybe.  I'll pop out a hypothesis since that is one of the things that I enjoy doing:

 - Media coverage of a fashion show --> demand

 --> Some factory in Indonesia ramps up production --> Some power plant operates at higher capacity producing more waste-water.

 --> Some algae bloom changes ocean currents around some island.

 --> butterfly effect sparks and el-nino in the pacific --> global temps up that year (or la-nina --> down if you prefer.)

If you like the hypothesis, you can keep it.  Do some calcs and measurements and maybe it will produce enough interest for me to re-visit it, else, like most of my hypotheses, I'll never think about it again.

No.  It doesn't.

Probably my most productive 15 minutes in science class was the one time when the teacher (the good one I mentioned) talked about religion.  He was probably among the top 10 science teachers in the state I would guess so the example is perhaps a little bit skewed.

On the first day, he described why he was not going to be talking about religion or the bible.  In order to do this, he started out be describing the basic fundamentals of hypothesis generation and testing so that he could describe the incompatibility and thus the reason for his stance.  He stressed that this did not mean that there was anything wrong about the bible or religion, just that it was not compatible with the philosophy of the scientific method in his opinion and in his training.

One other time this teacher mentioned the bible, or at least the age of the earth.  This was in the context of a discussion of carbon-14 decay rates.  He mentioned that it _could_ be that the decay rate had changed, then the theory of carbon dating could be wrong.  I only remember this (35 years later) because if the insert associated with biblical concepts.  So, I don't see why it is necessarily bad to have religion and science co-mingled to some extent.  Fact is, these things are co-mingled in real life in our society so it seems fine to me if kids get used to it.

---

As for teaching 'Arts in Math', I only remember the 'golden rectangle' at all because of the cross-pollination that some teacher somewhere introduced between the two subjects.  I don't remember the details, but I could easily look them up...and only because someone had 'incorrectly' taught one or the other of the subjects.

---

I am kind of embarrassed for 'my group' (atheists with a scientific bent) that they seem so threatened and butt-hurt by religion.  It is absolutely the case that people should not be discriminated against for their basic beliefs, but that cuts both ways and I see 'my side' as being more of the guilty party at this point in time.  I personally am not threatened by religion, but I'll throw in the caveat that I did not feel this confidence until relatively recently, and also that I've got my eye on religious intolerance from the devout side due to the long and sordid history of said.