Monday, July 30, 2007

Plant Spirit Shamanism - What's Up With The Weather?

Plant spirit shamen - natural therapists who work with herbs, ritual, and the elements - have got got long known that the human race is not made up of distinct and separate parts, but that we are all one: that the butterfly consequence of a single other driblet of H2O released from a cloud into a Gloucestershire river could eventually take to implosion therapy in the distant streets of London.

Through Gaea Theory and a more than informed apprehension in recent old age of how the natural world, the environment, and the clime really works, some men of science are also coming unit of ammunition to the shaman's age-old view of the connexions between all things.

How might these men of science and the shamen counter some of the current agnosticism about 'carbon footprints' and clime change, and what might they state about the 'freak weather condition conditions' many of us have been experiencing lately? What are the expostulations of the sceptics, what are the facts, and what are men of science and modern-day shamans saying?

DOES carbon dioxide (CO2) cause GLOBAL WARMING?

The skeptics state there is no "proof" of this. But cogent evidence is not the occupation of science, which deals, in fact, with the fine art of probabilities. Scientists, that is, do hypotheses ('best guesses') which are there not to be proved, but to be disproved - if possible.

The current best think – that CO2 makes make a Greenhouse Consequence by trapping solar radiation in the ambiance and causing temperatures rises on World – have been around since 1829, when Chief Joseph Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier first put option forward this hypothesis – and no-one's proven him incorrect yet.

Indeed, a recent study of almost 1,000 peer-reviewed scientific articles could not happen one which disagreed that clime alteration is a man-made phenomenon and that our end product of CO2 dramas a big portion in this.

Even those with a vested involvement in proving the men of science incorrect – like oil companies Exxon-Mobil, Shell, and BP – have all issued statements recently agreeing with the evidence: that clime alteration is taking place, that is happening as a consequence of our activities, and that CO2 is a factor.

One topographic point you can work out your ain C footmark is direct.gov.uk/ActOnCO2. You might be surprised at just how much you contribute.

If you'd then like the opportunity to something positive and practical to cut down it, another land site to check up on is http://www.thefourgates.com/villagefundraisers.html#earth thefourgates.com – then follow the nexus from The Village page to the fundraisers page and chink on the World C.O.S.T. link: Carbon Offset to Salvage Trees).

WHAT ABOUT SOLAR RADIATION? DOESN'T THAT cause clime CHANGE?

The current counter-theory to CO2 as the cause of planetary heating and climate alteration is one which seeks to put the incrimination on solar radiation. It looks at best, however, to be a no-theory. It have been known for many years, that is - and commonsense should state us in any case! - that solar radiation plays a portion in keeping the planet warm, because when the Sun radiances we all acquire a tan!

The science, however, demoes that the Sun plays a much littler function than nursery gasses in the state of affairs now facing us.

WHAT ABOUT OTHER 'NATURAL CAUSES' – LIKE animals AND water VAPOR?

Water vapor is a known portion of the Greenhouse Consequence – but it responds to alterations in clime rather than causing clime change. Vaporization and precipitation is a rhythm and any H2O in the ambiance doesn't remain there for more than than a few weeks.

Nature itself, in its widest to its narrowest forms, is also cyclical: the rhythm of life and death. Animals and works live, die, and go nutrient for others, and the CO2 they make acquires used up elsewhere as a consequence of this natural cycle.

Humans meanwhile, pump six gigatonnes of CO2 into the ambiance every twelvemonth and take small if any out. Nor make we set any fresh air back. We could make through activities like tree planting, since every tree naturally beginnings 650 kilogram of CO2, transforming pollution, offsetting carbon, and giving us back fresh air. The job is that few people are planting trees and, in fact, deforestation – the contrary of what we should be doing – is a major issue.

In 1600, for example, over 12% of Eire was covered by broadleaf forests. By 1800, the figure was down to 2%. Since then, the state have been working to reconstruct its woods but, by 2000, only 7% of forests had been returned. And, in the urgency to set trees back, the majority of planting have been non-native trees. Many of these – like the iroko, from Occident Africa - are being logged in such as an unsustainable manner that if the present charge per unit of depletion goes on the woods there will be gone in five years. The result is deadlock (at best).

It is for these grounds that The Village have introduced the World C.O.S.T. Program to works a new wood of indigenous trees at its Centre for environmental and personal healing.

As it is, the World absorbs about one-half of our current CO2 but the remainder hangs around as a nursery gas. Cutting back on energy use and planting more trees would help. We cognize this because degrees of CO2 have got been stable for one thousands of old age until the Industrial Revolution began 150 old age ago and deforestation also became rife.

ISN'T clime change JUST part OF A natural CYCLE?

It is true that every 100,000 old age or so the World is subject to climate alterations owed to its celestial orbit around the Sun. This is known as Milankovitch Cycle and its personal effects as well as its timeline are all fairly predictable.

In the 1970s, for example, men of science were already warning of a approaching Ice Age as a consequence of this Cycle, so nothing's changed there - except the timing. We should be able to foretell about 50,000 old age of natural heating as a consequence of the Milankovitch Cycle, that is; the problem, however, is that current heating is off the scale of measurement by a factor of – well, a lot! – if lone the Milankovitch Cycle was the cause.

Climate alteration and planetary heating is speeding the procedure up.

WE CAN'T PREDICT THE weather condition EVEN Type A few days AHEAD sol HOW bash WE KNOW WHAT THE clime OF THE future HOLDS?

Firstly, weather isn't climate. Weather mentions to individual cases of sun or rainfall in specific geographical areas; clime is the norm of all these cases over a larger country and a longer clip period of time. Weather alterations rapidly (which is why it can be so difficult to predict) but clime is relatively stable.

An analogy, if you're a gaming man, is the word form of a peculiar horse. Of course of study you can't foretell (i.e. know) if he'll win the race you've just wager the house on, but if you look back over his form, his public presentation on certain fields, and his fitness degrees now, then mean out his wins against losses, you can acquire an thought of his possible in this approaching race – adequate to do an informed decision, at least, on where to put your bet.

Which conveys us back to our first point, since this is also how scientific discipline works: through educated best guesses. And the current best guess, after studying past word form and looking at the wellness of the planet now, is that man-made CO2 is leading to raised temperatures and to clime change.

WHAT bash THE shamen SAY?

The Siouan medical specialty adult male Black Elk spoke early last century of the "sacred hoop of life", that all things are "one" and that everything is portion of a "great circle of existence". Visionaries like Black Elk, and works spirit shamen today, cognize that life on our planet amounts to far more than than the distinct boxes, capable of control and intervention, that we have got taken it to be until now.

James Lovelock – a illusionist man of science rather than a priest-doctor – have also shown, in our century, through his Gaea Hypothesis, that the human race is alive, aware, and intelligent; a self-regulating being that seeks balance, like our ain bodies.

The occupation of human beings, states Lovelock, is "through our intelligence and communicating [to move as] the nervous system of the planet. Through us, Gaea have seen herself from space and gets to cognize her topographic point in the universe. We should be the bosom and head of the Earth, not its malady".

A low supplication that we might begin taking our rightful topographic point by simply planting a few more than trees.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Highway to the Future

Toyota is bringing the "Highway to the Future: Mobile River Loanblend Experience," to Livingston, Treasure State for the Northern Rocky Mountains Sustainability Fair. It is a countrywide circuit that is designed to supply consumers with a firsthand chance to undergo automotive loanblend technology.

In January 11, 2007, the circuit debuted at the San Jose International Car Show. It is now traveling to more than than 150 events across the state during the adjacent 18 months. Through a figure of synergistic educational exhibits and diagnostic prove drives, consumers will have got got got got an chance to test Toyota's Crossed Synergy Drive system and larn about crossed technology.

Celeste Migliore, Toyota's National Director for Advanced Technology Vehicles, said that most people have heard of crossed engineering and probably have a shallow thought of how it works, but only a few have actually driven a loanblend and or taken an up-close look at its operation. According to Migliore, the circuit lets consumers to larn more than on the engineering behind this system and the benefits derived from crossed vehicles.

Highway to the Future: Mobile River Loanblend Experience mathematical functions like a mobile museum to the environment as well as to option fuels. The exhibit will be situated at Sacajawea Park from 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 14.

Within the exhibit, there are four distinct synergistic acquisition areas. One is the "Alternative Fuels: Fueling the Future". It places the differences in the different types of option combustibles and how they are produced. Next is the "Environment and Resources: Small Steps, Big Difference", which demoes attendants what they can do to make a difference to the environment. The 3rd 1 is "The Prius Drive Experience", which feigns the current Loanblend Synergy Drive engineering allowing visitants to interact with system while on-screen instruction manual offering drive tips, and the last 1 is the "Hybrid Technology: Not All Hybrids are Created Equal" exhibit which gives visitants a better apprehension of the different loanblend engineering options on the marketplace and how loanblends benefit the consumer and the environment as well.

Other than those, the exhibit supplies attendants the opportunity to acquire behind the wheel of the Prius, Camry Crossed and Highlander Loanblend for them to undergo Toyota's Loanblend Synergy Drive system.

Not only interesting educational activities are offered by the loanblend experience. It is also designed to get rid of its ain environmental impact. As a substance of fact, Toyota will set more than than 50,000 trees in award of those visiting the experience in stead of the National Arbor Day Foundation. These trees will assist refund the "carbon footprint" of the motortrucks which are transporting the circuit across the state and will go on to have got a positive impact on the environment as old age go through by.

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Bio Fuels - Avoiding Unintended Environmental Consequences

One of the many silver news beginnings I digest (Get it?) recently reported that many dairymen throughout the state are closing down their dairies, selling the cows, and preparing to works maize and soys instead. This is largely owed to the fact that dairy farm work is long, difficult and arduous, and the enticement of money from the ethyl alcohol marketplace looks like a much better gig. It is a displacement that tin do a batch of sense, but expression for it to have got an consequence on milk, and other dairy farm prices. This conveys me to my point. The rippling consequence in economic system and environment.

This is often very slippery and unpredictable, particularly with such as volatile industries, but it is deserving disbursement a small clip in consideration, particularly since it could convey about some unintended consequences, and perhaps, some inconvenient truths.

Nowhere is this more than apparent than in the motion away from dodo fuels, and toward bio fuels. I like the thought of growing our fuels. It would be great for the environment, at least to a point. Let me explicate my concern.

If in the procedure of raising the natural stuffs for this change, we can avoid creating new environmental problems, it will be not only great, but bordering on the miraculous! One of the things we will necessitate to cover with is the inquiry of erosion. The ethyl alcohol marketplace will, without a doubt, draw many people into farming, most of whom will have got small involvement in maintaining environmental integrity. Can we carry through this without producing a new "dust bowl?"

What if we happen that production will be deficient for our demands owed to drought or flooding, after we have got go dependent on these new methods? Volition we then turn to methyl alcohol production and endure the personal effects of millions of people stripping the woods and pasturelands in order to drive.

What will go on if so many of our husbandmen ranchers and dairymen transmigrate to ethyl alcohol production, and away from nutrient production that it impacts the terms and handiness of nutrient adversely? Great, we have got combustible to acquire to the store, but no nutrient to purchase when we acquire there!

I am not saying that bio combustibles are not the answer. When coupled with other engineerings and innovations, including solar technology, storage cell improvements, better ways to harness weave and kinetic energy, more than efficient powerfulness coevals and application, H power, and many others, all workings in tandem, great advancement can be made. We necessitate to make certain that we do not set all our eggs in one basket, as we seemingly have got done with dodo fuels. We also necessitate to do certain that we are prepared to cover with the different set of effects that are possible with any emerging technology.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Population Control an Answer to Saving the World?

Thomas Henry Martin Robert Malthus, a British Presbyterian minister, who lived in the early 1800s, was renowned for his pessimistic anticipations regarding the hereafter of humanity. His major part was in the authorship of the essay ' The Principles of Population'. Thomas Malthus predicted that the demand for nutrient inevitably goes much greater than the supply of it. This anticipation is rooted in the thought that population additions geometrically while groceries turn at an arithmetic rate.

This anticipation failed for respective reasons, including his usage of unchanging analysis, taking recent tendencies and projecting them indefinitely into the future, often neglects for complex systems. Besides, the coming of industrial chemical science and usage of chemical fertilisers did much to increase harvest outputs and nutrient availability. Malthus' work also had a philosophical consequence on Prince Charles Charles Darwin and played a big function in his 'Theory of Evolution' and the conception of 'survival of the fittest'. In malice of the dangers of over population, Thomas Malthus thought that contraceptive method was immoral and wrong. Instead, he thought the hope for world was to have got a deeper morality regarding sexual self-control. His work was popular but none of the computations he made came true.

The most of import inquiry raised today is whether population control is truly necessary. Some say that population control is necessary, especially in poorly developed states .It have been argued that it is irresponsible to let an underprivileged household to convey another hungry oral cavity into the human race and that underprivileged people should be encouraged, or even forced, to utilize some word form of birth control and even abortion, if necessary. The Catholic Church was strongly criticized for insisting that unreal birth control is morally incorrect and abortion is out of the question. However, the Catholic Church sees even an embryo to be a life and as such, it is morally incorrect to 'kill' off portion of the population. The contention should be that even if there is truth to the thought that overspill is threatening some people's criterion of living, the solution is not to kill but the attending should be focused on enhancing planetary nutrient production with improved technologies.

Most people see the right solution to this so-called population control job would be birth control, which include the usage of contraception, abortion drugs and sterilization. In 1990, the United Nations carried out a survey on population trends, and that study predicted that the human race population would level out at 11.3 billion by the end of the adjacent century. Other estimations study the figure to be 8 to 9 billion. This population is considered to be sustainable.

Human beingnesses should be given the freedom to make up one's mind whether they desire to have got offspring. Reproduction after all is the ether of humanity. The joyousnesses and hopes that children conveys into our lives can only be experienced when you are a parent. So when it come ups to the large inquiry of whether population control is the reply to economy the world, then we should assail the implicit in jobs of poorness and quality of life through instruction and consciousness programmes than through playing God.