CO2 Curve Ticks Upward

SUBHEAD: Everything we do is tied to energy and climate and the carbon dioxide "ppm" curve tracks ever upward on Mauna Loa. Image above: Photo of the north slope of Maua Loa as seen from Mauna Kea. From http://www.steephill.tv/2006/mauna-kea/pictures/mauna%20loa%20over%20the%20clouds%23.html By John Heilprin on 23 November 2009 in Google News - (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hplptq9wxlp5eCDFL2Mv5A_H6bcwD9C5EC7O1)

MAUNA LOA OBSERVATORY, Hawaii — The readings at this 2-mile-high station show an upward curve as the world counts down to climate talks: Global warming gases have built up to record levels in the atmosphere, from emissions that match scientists' worst-case scenarios.

Carbon dioxide concentrations this fall are hovering at around 385 parts per million, on their way to a near-certain record high above 390 in the first half of next year, at the annual peak.

"For the past million years we've never seen 390. You have to wonder what that's going to do," said physicist John Barnes, the observatory director.

One leading atmospheric scientist, Stephen Schneider, sees "coin-flip odds for serious outcomes for our planet."

Far from this mid-Pacific government observatory, negotiators from 192 nations gather in Copenhagen, Denmark, next month to try to agree on steps to head off the worst of the climate disruptions researchers say will result if concentrations hit around 450 parts per million — in 30 years at the current rate. Some say the world has already passed a danger point, at 350 ppm, and must roll back.

Today's emissions curve is tracking the worst case among seven emissions scenarios set out in 2001 by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, British climatologists reported in September.

The U.N. expert group projects that such a path would raise global temperatures between 2.4 and 6.4 degrees Celsius (4.3 and 11.5 degrees F) by century's end. That would come on top of a global temperature increase of about 0.6 degrees Celsius (1 degree Fahrenheit) in the past century, a warming trend the IPCC says is mainly due to the buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Such warming will shift climate patterns, cause more extreme weather events, spread drought and floods to new areas, kill off plant and animal species, and cause seas to rise from heat expansion and the melting of land ice, the IPCC says.

"Changing several degrees may not seem like much, but we're just changing things too fast," Barnes said. "So the consequences could well be drastic."

The IPCC has urged industrialized countries to reduce global emissions by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. As of 2007, they stood only 4 percent below 1990 levels, and the rest of the world continued pouring out more and more heat-trapping gases, chiefly from the burning of coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels.

Through this decade global emissions have grown by 23 percent. In 2008, almost three-quarters of the increase came from China, researchers reported last week. Other big contributors among developing countries were India, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, Indonesia, Iran and Mexico.

Experts see no sign of a slowdown.

It would "probably be at 390 (ppm) next year at Mauna Loa," said Fred T. Mackenzie, a professor emeritus of oceanography at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. That would represent almost a 40-percent increase in carbon-dioxide density in the atmosphere since before the industrial age and extensive use of fossil fuels.

Schneider, a Stanford University climatologist, said the world faces a huge risk.

"I think meters of sea-level rise are virtually inevitable, unless we can stop this. But I'm not such an optimist," he told journalists on a fellowship program with the Honolulu-based East-West Center. "The main message is we're in risk management. We do not know the science well enough to know exactly what the temperature is at when a tipping point will occur."

This U.S. government observatory, 11,141 feet up Mauna Loa's northern flank, also measures methane and other significant greenhouse gases. It was here on Hawaii's Big Island that climatologist Charles David Keeling pioneered the measurement of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, installing his experimental manometer on the gently sloping volcano in 1958.

He chose the site, already a U.S. Weather Service station, because the trade winds blowing over it had some of the cleanest air on the planet. Barnes said the CO2 measurements here, thousands of miles from major industry, were the first to show that manmade carbon dioxide emissions were accumulating throughout the global atmosphere.

The upward trend, averaging 1.9 parts per million per year in the past decade, undergoes seasonal fluctuations. In summer, during the growing season, plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But in winter, the concentration of C02 rises as vegetation and other biomass decompose.

The observatory is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's worldwide network for measuring greenhouse gases. It coordinates measurements with other U.S.-run research stations in Alaska, California, American Samoa and the South Pole. Japan and Australia also run such networks.

The Mauna Loa researchers extend their measurements through their "flask network" — containers sent to dozens of places around the world each week or carried on commercial ships so people can fill them with air and send them back to be measured for C02 and other gases.

Barnes, watching the carbon dioxide "ppm" curve track ever upward on Mauna Loa, while some other greenhouse gases decline, noted that long-lived CO2 is "more and more the bigger player."

"It is going into the ocean, and there's some plant uptake, but a whole lot of it just goes into the air and it's going to stay there for thousands of years," he said.

See also:

NOAA Mauna Loa Observatory: http://www.mlo.noaa.gov/ Ea O Ka Aina: Climate Change and Kauai 11/22/09

Tim Geithner's Disgrace

SUBHEAD: Geithner doesn't know how to negotiate, doesn't understand what cards he holds, and doesn't understand the need for fundamental reform. Image above: Collage of Minotaur playing Tim Geithner for a fool. From http://www.drunkard.com/issues/07_05/0705_poker_guide.htm Modified by Juan Wilson.

By Eliot Spitzer on 23 November 2009 in Slate Magazine - (http://www.slate.com/id/2236460)

The issue has been festering for months: Why were AIG's counterparties—including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and UBS—paid 100 cents on the dollar when the feds rescued the insurance giant, helping raise the cost of the bailout to nearly $200 billion? A new report issued by Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky now reveals that government officials, notably then-New York Fed President and current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, grievously damaged the nation and capitulated to the very banks they should have been supervising.

Barofsky's report reads like a case study in failed negotiation. The New York Fed didn't have the backbone to stand up to Wall Street, didn't understand its capacity to protect taxpayers, and didn't appreciate that its responsibility was to taxpayers.

Geithner and the Fed have proffered a series of spurious reasons for their willingness to pay AIG's counterparties—the leading Wall Street banks—in full while demanding concessions from every other entity with whom the Treasury or the Fed dealt. Geithner suggested he could not use the threat of AIG's default in the absence of a federal bailout to get concessions from AIG's creditors. Why not?

That is exactly what the government did with the auto industry, and rightly so. The entity providing financing to a near-bankrupt institution must always seek contributions from everyone else at risk. The fact that the Fed had a strong predisposition against letting AIG go into bankruptcy didn't mean the Fed shouldn't have used every opportunity to wrangle concessions from the other parties. For Geithner to say it would have been "unethical" to negotiate for concessions is sheer silliness. It is akin to saying that having decided that you are willing to pay up to $250,000 for a house, it is unethical to negotiate to buy it for $225,000.

Geithner also claims that using the possibility of AIG's default as a negotiating opportunity would have cast doubt on the government's commitment to financial stability. What? Seeking to get other parties to share the burden demonstrates a lack of commitment to restoring financial stability and market-based realities? Pressuring Goldman and the other counterparties to offer concessions would have forced them to absorb the consequences of making suspect deals with an insurance company that was essentially a Ponzi scheme. Forcing them to give concessions would have been one small step toward ending the moral hazard the Fed had allowed to flourish for years.

Geithner also claims that refusal to pay 100 cents on the dollar might have been misinterpreted by the rating agencies and so cast a shadow on AIG's credit rating. Huh? AIG was flat-lining. The only way to restore its credit rating was for the government to bail it out—and to negotiate the best possible deal while doing so.

Perhaps most remarkable is that Geithner claims the "sanctity of contract" prevented renegotiating with the counterparties. But the government wasn't a party to these contracts! The government was stepping in with taxpayer money to save a broken company on terms to be set by the government. The counterparties had the contractual right to refuse the terms, throw AIG into bankruptcy, and suffer the consequences. In a workout context, the entity with cash—here, the government—can set the terms, and the other parties can either accept those terms or walk over to bankruptcy court. The government had absolutely no contractual obligation to do anything.

Also amazing is Geithner's assertion that he and the Fed were acting on behalf of AIG. Perhaps nothing is more fundamental than knowing whom you represent. Geithner and the Fed were supposed to be acting on behalf of taxpayers and citizens, not AIG. Their effort was supposed to get the best result for taxpayers: preserving the structure of the economy and stopping a free fall. That—not preserving AIG's market value—was the rationale for intervention. Once tax dollars were at stake, Geithner should have been asking how to achieve the best economic result while minimizing taxpayers' exposure.

Geithner has tried to deflect some of this criticism by suggesting that it is "untainted by experience." I would suggest that it is Geithner who displays lack of experience in his dealing with the financial community. He doesn't know how to negotiate, doesn't understand what cards he holds, and doesn't understand the need for fundamental reform.

See also: Ea O Ka Aina: Financial Follies 2.0 10/8/09

Red Alert

SUBHEAD: The second wave of the financial tsunami is gathering force and will hit in the first half of 2010. Image above: Still of SNL skit with Obama and Chinese leader Wen Jiabao. From http://www.hulu.com/watch/110317/saturday-night-live-china-cold-open By Matthias Chang on 24 November 2009 in Global Research - (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16218) Many of my friends who have been receiving my e-mail alerts over the last two years have lamented that in recent weeks I have not commented on the state of the global economy. I appreciate their anxiety but they forget that I am not a stock market analyst who is paid to write articles to lure investors back into the market. My website is free and I do not sell a financial newsletter so there is no need for me to churn out daily forecasts or analysis. However, when the data is compelling and supports an inevitable trend, it is time for another review. This Red Alert is to enable visitors to my website to take appropriate actions to safeguard their wealth and welfare of their families in the coming months. Since the last quarter of 2008, unrelenting currency warfare has been waged by the key global economies and while this competition thus far has been non-antagonistic, it will soon be antagonistic because the inherent differences are irreconcilable. The consequences to the global economy will be devastating and for the ordinary people, massive unemployment and social unrest are assured. The policy-makers of these countries faced with the total collapse of the international financial architecture have concluded that the solution, the only solution is quantitative easing (i.e. massive injection of liquidity) to salvage the “too big to fail” banks and reflate their depressed economies. This is best reflected in Bernanke’s candid remark that, “the US government has a technology, called the printing press (or today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost”. This is the crux of the problem! The Irreconcilable Differences Some two decades ago, it was decided by the global financial elites that the framework for the global economy shall consist of: 1) A global derivative-based financial system, controlled by the US Federal Reserve Bank and its associate global banks in the developed countries. 2) The re-location from the West to the East in the production of goods, principally to China and India to “feed” the developed economies. The entire system was built on a simple principle, that of a FED-controlled global reserve currency which will be the engine for growth for the global economy. It is essentially an imperialist economic principle. Once we grasp this fundamental truth, Bernanke’s boast that the “US can produce as many US dollars as it wishes at no cost” takes on a different dimension. I have talked to so many economists and when asked what is the crux of the present financial problem, they all respond in unison, “it is the global imbalances... the West consumes too much while the East saves too much and consumes not enough”. This is exemplified by the huge US trade deficits on the one part and China’s massive surpluses on the other. Incredible wisdom and almost everyone echoes this mantra. The recent concluded APEC Summit was no different. This mantra was repeated as well as the call for freer trade between trading nations. This is a grand hoax. All the current leaders on the world’s stage are corrupted to the rotten core and as such have no interest to call a spade a spade and expose the inherent contradictions within the existing financial system. The call for a multi-polar world is meaningless when the entire global financial system is based on the unipolar US dollar reserve currency. This is the inherent contradiction within the present system and the problems associated with it cannot be resolved by another global reserve currency based on the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights as advocated by some countries. It was stillborn, the very moment it was conceived! The leaders of China, Japan and the oil producing countries of the Middle East are all cursing and pissing about the current situation, but they don’t have the courage of their convictions to spell it out to their countrymen that they have been conned by the financial spin masters from the Fed acting on the instructions from Goldman Sachs. Tell me which leader would dare admit that they have exchanged the nation’s wealth for toilet papers? The toilet paper currency pantomime continues. We have now reached a stalemate in the current currency war, not unlike the situation of the Cold War between the NATO pact countries and the Warsaw pact countries. Both sides were deterred by the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine of nuclear wars. The costs to both sides were horrendous and it was only when the Soviet Union could not continue with the pace and cost of maintaining a nuclear deterrent and was forced into bankruptcy that the balance tilted in favour of the NATO alliance. But it was a pyrrhic victory for the US and it allies. What kept the ability of the US to maintain its military might and outspend the Soviet Union was the right to print toilet paper currency and the acceptance of the US dollar by her allies as the world’s reserve currency. But why did the countries allied to the US during the Cold War accepted the status quo? Simple! They were all conned into believing that without the protection of Big Brother and its military outreach, they would be swallowed up by the communist menace. They agreed to march to the tune of the US Pied-Piper. The next big question – why did the so-called “liberated” former communist allies of the Soviet bloc jump on the bandwagon? Simple! They all believed in the illusion that was fostered by the global banks, led by Goldman Sachs that trading and selling their goods and services for the toilet paper US reserve currency would ensure untold wealth and prosperity. But the biggest game in town was the Asia gambit. Japan, after a decade of recession following the burst of her property bubble did not have the means and the capacity to bring the game to the next level as envisaged by the financial architects in Goldman Sachs. And China was the biggest beneficiary. The senior management of Goldman Sachs brokered a secret pact with China’s leaders that in exchange for orchestrating the most massive injection of US dollar capital and wholesale re-location of manufacturing capacity in the history of the global economy, China would recycle their hard-earned US toilet paper reserve currency wealth into US treasuries and other US debt instruments. This was the necessary condition precedent for the global financial casino to rise to the next level of play. Why? The New Game The financial architects at Goldman Sachs had a master plan – to dominate the global financial system. The means to achieve this financial power was the Shadow Banking System, the lynchpin being the derivative market and the securitization of assets, real and synthetic. The stakes would be huge, in the hundreds of US$ trillions and the way to transform the market was through massive leverage at all levels of the financial game. But there was an inherent weakness in the overall scheme – the threat of inflation, more precisely hyperinflation. Such huge amounts of liquidity in the system would invariably trigger the depreciation of the reserve currency and the confidence in the system. Hence the need for a system to keep in check price inflation and the illusion that the purchasing power of the toilet paper reserve currency could be maintained. This is where China came in. Once China became the world’s factory, the problem would be resolved. When a suit which previously cost US$600 could be had for less than US$100, and a pair of shoes for less than US$5, the scam masterminds concluded that there would be no foreseeable threat to the largest casino operation in history. China agreed to the exchange as it has over a billion mouths to feed and jobs for hundreds of millions needed to be secured, without which the system could not be maintained. But China was pragmatic enough to have two “economic systems” – a Yuan based domestic economy and a US$ based export economy, in the hope that the profits and benefits of the export economy would enable China to transform and establish a viable and dynamic domestic market which in time would replace the export dependent economy. It was a deal made with the devil, but there were no viable alternative options at the material time, more so after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Next Level of the Game The next level of the game was reached when the toilet paper reserve currency literally went virtual – through the simple operation of a click of the mouse in the computers of the global banks. The big boys at Goldman Sachs and other global banks were more than content to leave Las Vegas for the mafia and their miserable billions in turnover. The profits were considered dimes when compared to the hundreds of trillions generated by the virtual casino. It was a financial conquest beyond their wildest dreams. They even called themselves, “Master of the Universe”. Creating massive debts was the new game, and the big boys could even leverage more than 40 times capital! Asset values soared with so much liquidity chasing so few good assets. However, the financial wizards failed to appreciate and or underestimate the amount of financial products that were needed to keep the game in play. They resorted to financial engineering – the securitization of assets. And when real assets were insufficient for securitization, synthetic assets were created. Soon enough, toxic waste was even considered as legitimate instruments for the game so long as it could be unloaded to greedy suckers with no recourse to the originators of these so-called investments. For a time, it looked as if the financial wizards have solved the problem of how to feed the global casino monster. Unfortunately, the music stopped and the bubble burst! And as they say the rest is history. The Goldman Sachs Remedy When losses are in the US$ trillions and whatever assets / capital remaining are in the US$ billions, we have a huge problem – a financial black-hole. The preferred remedy by the financial masterminds at Goldman Sachs was to create another hoax – that if the big global banks were to fail triggering a systemic collapse, there would be Armageddon. These “too big to fail” banks must be injected with massive amount of virtual monies to recapitalize and get rid of the toxic assets on their balance sheet. The major central banks in the developed countries in cahoots with Goldman Sachs sang the same tune. All sorts of schemes were conjured to legitimize this bailout. In essence, what transpired was the mere transfer of monies from the left pocket to the right pocket, with the twist that the banks were in fact helping the Government to overcome the financial crisis. The Fed and key central banks agreed to lend “virtual monies” to the “too big to fail” global banks at zero or near zero interest rate and these banks in turn would “deposit” these monies with the Fed and other central banks at agreed interest rates. These transactions are all mere book entries. Other “loans” from the Fed and central banks (again at zero or near zero interest rates) are used to purchase government debts, these debts being the stimulus monies needed to revive the real economy and create jobs for the growing unemployed. So in essence, these banks are given “free money” to lend to the government at prior agreed interest rates with no risks at all. It is a hoax! These “monies” are not even the dollar bills, but mere book entries created out of thin air. So when the Fed injects US$ trillions into the banking system, it merely credits the amount in the accounts of the “too big to fail” banks at the Fed. When the system is applied to international trade, the same modus operandi is used to pay for the goods imported from China, Japan etc. For the rest of world, when buying goods denominated in US$, these countries must produce goods and services, sell them for dollars in order to purchase goods needed in their country. Simply put, they have to earn an income to purchase whatever goods and services needed. In contrast, all that the US needs to do is to create monies out of thin air and use them to pay for their imports! The US can get away with this scam because it has the military muscle to compel and enforce this hoax. As stated earlier, this status quo was accepted especially during the Cold War and with some reluctance post the collapse of the Soviet Union, but with a proviso – that the US agrees to be the consumer of last resort. This arrangement provided some comfort because countries which have sold their goods to the US, can now use the dollars to buy goods from other countries as more than 80 per cent of world trade is denominated in dollars especially crude oil, the lifeline of the global economy. But with the US in full bankruptcy and its citizens (the largest consumers in the world) being unable to borrow further monies to buy fancy goods from China, Japan and the rest of the world, the demand for dollar has evaporated. The dollar status as a reserve currency and its usefulness is being questioned more vocally. The End Game The present fallout can be summarized in simple terms: Should a bankrupt country (the US) be allowed to use money created out of thin air to pay for goods produced with the sweat and tears of hardworking citizens of exporting countries? Adding insult to injury, the same dollars are now purchasing a lot less than before. So what is the use of being paid in a currency that is losing rapidly its value? On the other hand, the US is telling the whole world, especially the Chinese that if they are not happy with the status quo, there is nothing to stop them from selling to the other countries and accepting their currencies. But if they want to sell to the mighty USA, they must accept US toilet paper reserve currency and its right to create monies out of thin air! This is the ultimate poker game and whosoever blinks first loses and will suffer irreparable financial consequences. But who has the winning hand? The US does not have the winning hand. Neither has China the winning hand. This state of affairs cannot continue for long, for whatever cards the US or China may be contemplating to throw at the table to gain strategic advantage, any short term gains will be pyrrhic, for it will not be able to address the underlying antagonistic contradictions. When the survival of the system is dependent on the availability of credit (i.e. accumulating more debts) it is only a matter of time before both the debtor and creditor come to the inevitable conclusion that the debt will never be paid. And unless the creditor is willing to write off the debt, resorting to drastic means to collect the outstanding debt is inevitable. It would be naïve to think that the US would quietly allow itself to be foreclosed! When we reach that stage, war will be inevitable. It will be the US-UK-Israel Axis against the rest of the world. The Prelude to the End Game The US economy will be spiraling out of control in the coming months and will reach critical point by the end of the 1st quarter 2010 and implode by the 2nd quarter. The massive US$ trillions of dollars stimulus has failed to turn the economy around. The massive blood transfusion may have kept the patient alive, but there are numerous signs of multi-organ failure. There will be another wave of foreclosures of residential and more importantly commercial properties by end December and early 2010. And the foreclosed properties in 2009 will lead to depressed prices once they come through the pipeline. Home and commercial property values will plunge. Banks’ balance sheets will turn ugly and whatever “record profits” in the last two quarters of 2009 will not cover the additional red ink. Given the above situation, will the Fed continue to buy mortgage-backed securities to prop up the markets? The Fed has already spent trillions buying Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages with no potential substitute buyer in sight. Therefore, the Fed’s balance sheet is as toxic as the “too big to fail” banks that it rescued. In the circumstances, it makes no sense for anyone to assert that the worst is over and that the global economy is on the road to recovery. And the surest sign that all is not well with the big banks is the recent speech by the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, William Dudley at Princeton, New Jersey when he said that the Fed would curtail the risk of future liquidity crisis by providing a “backstop” to solvent firms with sufficient collateral. This warning and assurance deserves further consideration. Firstly, it is a contradiction to state that a solvent firm with sufficient collateral would in fact encounter a liquidity crisis to warrant the need for a fall back on the Fed. It is in fact an admission that banks are not sufficiently capitalized and when the second wave of the tsunami hits them again, confidence will be sorely lacking. Dudley actually said that, “the central bank could commit to being the lender of last resort... [and this would reduce] the risk of panics sparked by uncertainty among lenders about what other creditors think”. To put it bluntly what he is saying is that the Fed will endeavour to avoid the repeat of the collapse of Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros and AIG. It is also an indication that the remaining big banks are in trouble. It is interesting to note that a Bloomberg report in early November revealed that Citigroup Inc and JP Morgan Chase have been hoarding cash. The former has almost doubled its cash holdings to US$244.2 billion. In the case of the latter, the cash hoard amounted to US$453.6 billion. Yet, given this hoarding by the leading banks, the New York Federal Reserve Bank had to reassure the financial community that it is ready to inject massive liquidity to prop up the system. It should come as no surprise that the value of the dollar is heading south. When currencies are being debased, volatility in the stock market increases. But the gains are not worth the risks and if anyone is still in the market, they will be wiped out by the 1st quarter of 2010. The S&P may have shot up since the beginning of the year by over 25 per cent but it has been out-performed by gold. The gains have also lagged behind the official US inflation rate. It has in fact delivered a total return after inflation of approximately minus 25 per cent. When Meredith Whitney remarked that, “I don’t know what’s going on in the market right now, because it makes no sense to me”, it is time to get out of the market fast. In a report to its clients, Société Générale warned that public debt would be massive in the next two years – 105 per cent of GDP in the UK, 125 per cent in the US and in Europe and 270 per cent in Japan. Global debt would reach US$45 trillion. At some point in time, all these debts must be repaid. How will these debts be repaid? If we go by what Bernanke has been preaching and practising, it means more toilet paper currency will be created to repay the debts. As a result, debasement of currencies will continue and this will further aggravate existing tensions between the competing economies. And when creditors have enough of this toilet paper scam, expect violent reactions!

Urban Farming Revolution

SUBHEAD: What if we were to grow food, demonstrate the principles of sustainability, and provide green education and employment in our own neighborhoods? Image above: A CERES urban farm photo from article. By Niall Fahy on 23 November 2009 in Reality Sandwich - (http://www.realitysandwich.com/urban_farming_revolution)

An Australian sustainability collective has come up with a novel approach to bringing ecological organic food production into our cities. Their design is fast, efficient, cheap, demountable, and scalable. Welcome to the urban farming revolution proposed by CERES.

Cities, in the normal scheme of things, suck inordinate amounts of resources from the surrounding countryside. They are massive energy sinks, guzzling power and food while producing tonnes of carbon dioxide and waste. Moreover, the city limits demarcate a perceived division between synthetic and natural -- between the high speed sophistication of modern civilization and the relative placidity of agrarian life. We often tend to think that in our living arrangements one has to largely forsake one's connection to either culture or nature.

Climate change and the approach of peak oil will demand localization of food and energy production. With this in mind, CERES (the Center for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies) -- a community based model of sustainable society in the metropolis of Melbourne, Australia -- plans to build a number of modular high-density organic farming hubs on disused pieces of land throughout the city.

These intensive urban mini-farms are designed to be highly productive, energy efficient, customizable, and cheap to build using shipping containers and plastic poly-tunnels. Incorporating aquaponic vegetable cultivation, fish farming, mushroom production, beehives, and a food processing and distribution service, the farms are designed within the permaculture ethos of mimicking nature's flows. The waste of one process becomes fuel for the next, and each stage of the process yields a product.

Aquaponic farming means that water (rather than soil) is used as a medium in which to grow plants. In an urban setting, this solves the all-too-likely issue of soil contamination due to industrial pollution. In the CERES model the aquaponic system will be fertilized using water pumped from the fish farm beneath, which is rich in nutrients from their waste. The fish are fed vegetable scraps and worms grown in mushroom compost. Root systems of tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, leafy greens, strawberries, sprouts, and herbs will in turn clean the water before it recirculates to the fish.

Biodigesters that can decontaminate organic waste and turn it into usable energy are another potential component of this rapid-turnover design, as are solar panels and a water harvesting system. The food distribution area -- which will operate as a co-operative -- could also function as a café, education center, and community social space. As no permanent structures are built, the need for planning permission is eliminated, making the hubs easier to implement and also more palatable to any property developers or government bodies that may end up being involved.

One of these farms can be set up within a week, and the first will be installed in Melbourne in early 2010. The project's proponents want this to be the first of many, and are talking to the local Office of Housing and Schools, seeking pieces of land that will be available for as little as three years. And they can't wait to see what people around the world will do with their idea. In the spirit of emerging P2P information-sharing paradigms such as that of Missouri's Open Source Ecology, the hubs will be intended to inspire people all over the world to follow suit and refine the designs to fit their own local needs.

Given sufficient opportunity, the concept could provide a significant portion of the city's food while providing education and employment for hundreds of urban farmers and installers. Through being empowered in this way, communities can become more self-sufficient, not to mention happier. Chris Ennis, organic farm manager and co-designer of the hub scheme, told me that "I see people light up when they're participating in meaningful work like this. Helping to feed your neighbors is a worthwhile thing to do."

Image above: CERES 10 acres site in Brunswick East, Victoria, Australia. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERES_Community_Environment_Park

CERES has always been about demonstration and inspiration. Started 25 years ago on the site of a former garbage dump, it is now a green haven in the midst of the city that is visited by 70,000 schoolkids and 400,000 adults every year. The 10 acre center runs on renewable energy, is a 55 tonne carbon sink, conserves and recycles its water and waste, grows organic food, and teaches diverse audiences about socially and environmentally conscious ways of living.

Central to the concept is that sustainability initiatives are located in a participatory social setting. At CERES this entails community arts and music festivals, an organic garden and market/food co-op, a plant nursery, a bicycle workshop, a café, community and school gardens, an energy park, weekly sweat lodges, and numerous experiential education programs.

It began with the dream of a few progressive community thinkers, to create a place that would demonstrate principles of sustainability and social equity, in an atmosphere of community participation. They chose the name Ceres (pronounced "eries") -- that of the Roman goddess of agriculture. Since those humble beginnings the project has grown to employ 200 people and is an incorporated Not For Profit organization governed by a Committee of Management. The group's website describes their story as an evolutionary journey, acknowledging the interconnectedness of everything from our breath to the trees, to the stars formed in the Big Bang, to the Wurundjeri -- original inhabitants of the land upon which the undertaking stands.

There is no pollyanna-esque naiveté at work here; the organization's literature acknowledges the gravity of our present global situation and the crucial need to change the underlying value system that has produced such hideous disparity between rich and poor, such abominable destruction of the natural world. The CERES website states that they are "committed to redefining purpose, values, success and happiness in terms of the wellbeing of our relationships with one another and the environment. We see this as the bedrock on which to build a new way of being now and for the future. Here our needs are fulfilled as a natural outcome of our enhanced relationships with each other and the earth. Here our wants are aligned with the inherent nature of the earth to unfold in complexity, diversity and beauty."

Modern social and ecological activism is evolving. Efforts to change the status quo -- when practiced in a self-righteous or condemnatory tone -- often serve to divide and fragment rather than unite and heal. Through demonstrating positive and creative ways of living for anyone who cares to stop by, CERES have found that they "ignite and support people's passions for a better world."

The vision is that sustainability need not entail a return to antiquated ways of living, but can merely mean the incorporation of innovative technology into a respectfully treated environment. This sharing of their aspirations for urban farming is one way they hope to tap into the global community's yearning for reconnection with the Earth, feed their neighbors, and help to make our cities places where nature is not absent.

See also: Ea O Ka Aina: Urban Farming is the future 8/18/09 Ea O Ka Aina: How Cuba survived Peak Oil 9/10/09 Ea O Ka Aina: City farming with livestock 9/27/09

New Orleans and Kauai

SOURCE: Linda Harmon (harmonl001@hawaii.rr.com) SUBHEAD: A ruling against the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans may have an impact in Hanapepe Valley. [Editor's Note: After the Koloko Dam failure on Kauai in 2006, The Army Corps of Engineers ordered that the embankments of the Hanapepe River levees be stripped of all vegetation for inspection. The County has complied with backhoes and herbicides and kept the levees bare ever since. Subsequently the levees have suffered accelerated erosion and runoff. It's banks have continued being scoured away. No repairs have been begun or even proposed. Are our government agencies waiting for a disasterous flood to be spurred to action?] Image above: The stripped and eroded Hanapepe levee after orders from the Army Corps. Photo by Juan Wilson 3/28/07 By Richard Fausset on 19 November 2009 in the LA Times - (http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-katrina-flooding19-2009nov19,0,3370102.story) In a ruling that could leave the government open to billions of dollars in claims from Hurricane Katrina victims, a federal judge said late Wednesday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had displayed "gross negligence" in failing to maintain a navigation channel -- resulting in levee breaches that flooded large swaths of greater New Orleans. U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval peppered his 156-page decision, issued in New Orleans, with harsh criticism of the Army corps, at one point citing its "insouciance, myopia and shortsightedness" in failing to maintain the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, known locally as MRGO. Image above: A helicopter drops sandbags on broken levee after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. For more than 40 years, the judge said, the corps had known that a crucial levee protecting suburban St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood would be compromised by the deterioration of the channel. The corps had "myriad" ways to address the problem, he wrote, but failed to do so. Duval awarded a total of $719,000 to a small group of flood victims that sued the government in April 2006. But according to Pierce O'Donnell, the lead plaintiff's counsel, roughly 100,000 New Orleans-area residents and businesses who have filed flood-damage claims with the Army corps were now potentially eligible for payment. In a phone interview, O'Donnell hailed what he called a historic ruling, one that backed the widely held contention in New Orleans that the 2005 catastrophe was not just the fault of Mother Nature. "The judge agreed with us that Katrina was not a natural disaster," O'Donnell said. "Katrina was a man-made disaster caused by the Army Corps of Engineers." In a statement Wednesday, the Army corps said only that the opinion was being reviewed by lawyers from the Army and Justice Department. "We have no further comment at this time as the issues involved in the case are still subject to further litigation," the corps said. At the heart of the case was maintenance and operation of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet. The channel, which was decommissioned after Katrina, was completed in the 1960s as a shipping shortcut between New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. Over the years, the marshy banks of the channel had widened significantly in spots -- and long before Katrina hit, experts had warned that the destruction of wetlands could create a funnel effect that would intensify storm surges. During the trial, attorneys for the government argued that the Army Corps of Engineers was not liable for the post-hurricane flooding because it was immune from civil lawsuits questioning federal flood policy decisions. But Duval found that such "gross negligence" overrode any immunity claim. His opinion, however, does not apply to residents of New Orleans East, another badly flooded part of the region where O'Donnell had hoped to score a victory. Duval ruled that the Army corps was not negligent for failing to build a surge protection barrier there. The overall ruling could create problems for the Obama administration, which has promised to bring more attention and care to New Orleans than was evident during President George W. Bush's administration. Katrina, one of the worst disasters in U.S. history, caused more than 1,800 deaths in the Gulf Coast states and wreaked billions of dollars in property damage. In New Orleans, the storm surge breached levees in several places, flooding about 80% of the city. Many residents were left trapped on roofs or in attics for days. The federal government has promised tens of billions of dollars in post-storm rebuilding aid to Louisiana. The Justice Department has estimated that the total outstanding civil claims could amount to billions more. But those claimants, O'Donnell said, might not be paid until the appeals process is exhausted, which could last years. He called upon the Obama administration and Congress to agree to a universal settlement -- something he said the Bush administration had pledged not to do. O'Donnell said his team had filed a separate legal action that seeks to cover those thousands of victims in a class-action suit. He noted that the federal government had agreed to universal settlements in past cases in which it had erred, including after a 1976 failure of the Teton Dam in Idaho and the 2000 Cerro Grande fire in New Mexico, which started as a federal controlled burn.

Courting Convulsion

SUBHEAD: Going into Thanksgiving 2009, America's leadership has dedicated itself to the worst action it could take under the circumstances. Image above: Previously published in an article about Thanksgiving in IslandBreath.org From an illustration at http://www.worth1000.com

By James Kunstler on 23 November 2009 in www.Kunstler.com - (http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/11/courting-convulsion.html)

How infantile is American society? Last night's CBS "Business Update" (in the midst of its "60 Minutes" program) featured three items: 1.) The New Moon teen vampire movie led the weekend box-office receipts; 2.) Cadbury shares hit an all-time high; 3.) Michael Jackson's rhinestone-studded white glove sold at auction for $350,000. Some in-house CBS-News producer is responsible for this fucking nonsense. How does he or she keep her job? Is there no adult supervision at the network?

Meanwhile, over at The New York Times this morning, Paul "Nobel Prize" Krugman writes:

"Most economists I talk to believe that the big risk to recovery comes from the inadequacy of government efforts; the stimulus was too small, and it will fade out next year, while high unemployment is undermining both consumer and business confidence."

Disclosure: I'm not one of the economists that Mr. Krugman talks to (nor am I an economist). But it's sure interesting to know that the ones palavering with Mr. Krugman imagine that the US can possibly return to an economy based on the fraudulent securitization of reckless debt.

Does Mr. Krugman think that the production housing industry can resume paving over the nether exurbs with half-million-dollar houses (to be bought with no money down loans by the sheet-rockers working inside them)? Does he think all those people receiving cancellation notices from their credit card issuers are in a position to flash their plastic at the Gallerias this Friday? Or ever will be again? Is he perhaps misusing the term "recovery?" After all, that is generally taken to mean resuming a prior state, which is, in turn, presumed to be a healthy prior state. Is that what the economy of the past decade was?

And, incidentally, what exactly is a "consumer?" And why, at the highest levels of journalism in this land, do we refer to citizens that way? As if the American people have no other purpose except to buy things? Or is that that the only way an "economist" can imagine them?

I'm sorry to burden the reader with so many questions, but the idiots running the mainstream news media in this land are not doing it and somebody has to.

If a "recovery" is not in the cards, then what exactly is going on out there?

What's going on in the US economy is a slow-motion convulsion from which we will emerge as a very different nation with a different economy. The wild irresponsibility of the media in pretending otherwise is only going to make the convulsion worse, more painful, more socially and politically destructive.

The convulsion can be described with precision as one of compressive contraction. Historic circumstances are requiring us to change our behavior, to make new arrangements for everyday life in all the major particulars: capital accumulation and deployment; food production; commerce; habitation; transport; education; and health care. These new arrangements must be organized at a smaller and finer scale, and on a much more local basis.

The main "historic circumstance" mandating these changes goes under the heading of "peak oil." We've come to the end of our ability in this world to increase energy inputs to the global economy. The routine "growth" in industrial activity and production that has been the basis of our financial arrangements for 200-odd years is no longer possible. Offsetting this decline in oil energy "input" with "alt.energy" is a dangerous fantasy because it distracts us from the urgent task of making new arrangements for trade, food production, et cetera - the very things that would provide jobs and social roles for our citizens in the future.

We are seeing a comprehensive failure of leadership in every sector and every level of American life - in politics, business, banking, education, news media, medicine, and the clergy. All are determined to pretend that we can somehow continue the habits and behaviors of the pre peak oil era. They are all unwilling to face reality, and are all engaged in mutually supporting each other's dangerous fantasies.

If we don't attend to the transformation of American life by downscaling our activities and changing the way they are carried out, and re-localizing them, we will see our society disintegrate - and I use the word "dis-integrate" with purposeful precision. Everything will come apart - our political arrangements, our households, our health and well-being.

At the moment, banking is disintegrating. It's happening because the end of regular, predictable, cyclical, industrial growth means the end of our ability to generate credit without limits, and in fact we passed this point by stealth some time ago leaving the banks in "Wile E. Coyote" suspension above an abyss, where they have lately been joined by government at all levels and the indebted citizens of the land. The profound nausea spreading through the offices of America is the somatic recognition of exactly where we are in all this: off the cliff.

It's important to remind readers that so-called "capitalism" is not to blame. Capitalism is not an ideology. It refers to a set of laws governing the disposition of surplus wealth. There is going to be surplus wealth somewhere in the years ahead, even if our living standards fall substantially, even under the strictures of peak oil. All the communist experiments of the 20th century produced some kind of surplus wealth. All of them were subject to the phenomenon of compound interest. What matters in the disposition of capital are the rules created for accumulating and deploying it. In the USA the past two decades, we ignored the rules, repealed some of the critical laws, and failed to enforce the existing ones so that, when faced by the historic circumstances of peak oil, we allowed fraud and swindling to run wild - just at the moment when we should have taken the most care. That is why our money system ran off the rails.

We're now seeing worldwide a kind of race between the assertion of peak oil and the failures of capital management as to which will provoke a widespread convulsion first. They are obviously related and whichever gets us in the most trouble fastest, our destination is the same: the absolute necessity to reorganize how we live. Among the many elements of this is the fact that "globalism," in the Thomas Friedman sense of the word, is over. The urgent need to re-localize economies makes this self-evident. As a practical matter for us, this means committing to import replacement - making things we need in the US, probably much more regionally. "Globalism" now joins the many other fantasies that we can no longer indulge in.

At the moment, going into Thanksgiving 2009, America's leadership has dedicated itself to the worst action it could take under the circumstances: a campaign to sustain the unsustainable. This is what's embodied in the foolish term "recovery." The way we try to explain things to ourselves matters, if we don't want to be crushed by history. Go back to the top of this blog and look at the things we pay attention to. Aren't you ashamed?

The War on Soy

SOURCE: Ken Taylor (taylork021@hawaii.rr.com) SUBHEAD: Why the 'Miracle Food' May Be a Health Risk and Environmental Nightmare. Image above: Field of commercial soy crop. From http://www.nutri-tech.com.au/blog/?p=136 By Tara Lohan on 21 November 2009 in AlertNet - (http://www.alternet.org/water/144074/the_war_on_soy) These days, you can get soy versions of just about any meat -- from hot dogs to buffalo wings. If you're lactose-intolerant you can still enjoy soy ice-cream and soy milk on your cereal. If you're out for a hike and need a quick boost of energy, you can nibble on soy candy bars.

Soy is a lucrative industry. According to Soyfoods Association of North America, from 1992 to 2008, sales of soy foods have increased from $300 million to $4 billion. From sales numbers to medical endorsements, it would seem that soy has reached a kind of miracle food status.

In 2000 the American Heart Association gave soy the thumbs up and the FDA proclaimed: "Diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol that include 25 grams of soy protein a day may reduce the risk of heart disease." Over the course of the last decade medical professionals have touted its benefits in fighting not just cardiovascular disease, but cancers, osteoporosis and diabetes.

But soy's glory days may be coming to an end. New research is questioning its health benefits and even pointing out some potential risks. Although definitive evidence may be many years down the road, the American Heart Association has quietly withdrawn its support. And some groups are waging an all-out war, warning that soy can lead to certain kinds of cancers, lowered testosterone levels, and early-onset puberty in girls.

Most of the soy eaten today is also genetically modified, which may pose another set of health risks. The environmental implications of soy production, including massive deforestation, increased use of pesticides and threats to water and soil, are providing more fodder for soy's detractors.

All of this has many people wondering if they should even be eating it at all. And you are most likely eating it. Even if you're not a vegetarian or an avid tofu fan, there is a good chance you're still eating soy. Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, explains that soy is now an ingredient in three-quarters of processed food on the market and just about everything you'd find in a fast food restaurant. It's used as filler in hamburgers, as vegetable oil and an emulsifier. It's in salad dressing, macaroni and cheese, and chicken nuggets.

"Even if you read every label and avoid cardboard boxes, you are likely to find soy in your supplements and vitamins (look out for vitamin E derived from soy oil), in foods such as canned tuna, soups, sauces, breads, meats (injected under poultry skin), and chocolate, and in pet food and body-care products," wrote Mary Vance for Terrain Magazine. "It hides in tofu dogs under aliases such as textured vegetable protein, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, and lecithin--which is troubling, since the processing required to hydrolyze soy protein into vegetable protein produces excitotoxins such as glutamate (think MSG) and aspartate (a component of aspartame), which cause brain-cell death."

Health Risks or Rewards?

"I grew up in Houston on po' boys and the Wall Street Journal," said Robyn O'Brien. "I trusted our food system." But all that changed when one of her kids developed a food allergy and O'Brien began doing research to find out what's actually in our food and the companies behind it.

Her work led to the book,The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It, and she's become an incredible crusader on multiple fronts when it comes to food. She's also been educating consumers about soy's double-edged sword.

To understand why, it helps to know a little history about soy. It's been cultivated, starting in China, for 3,000 years. While Asian diets have generally included soy it has been in small amounts eaten fermented -- primarily via miso, natto and tempeh. "Fermenting soy creates health-promoting probiotics, the good bacteria our bodies need to maintain digestive and overall wellness," wrote Vance. "By contrast, in the United States, processed soy food snacks or shakes can contain over 20 grams of nonfermented soy protein in one serving."

It's not that all soy is bad; in fact, eating it in small doses can be quite healthy, if it's fermented. But when it's not, that's where the problems begin. Soy is a legume, which contains high amounts of phytic acid. Phytic acid binds to minerals (like calcium, magnesium, copper, iron and zinc), interfering with the body's ability to absorb them (which is usually a bad thing). Soy is also known to contain "antinutrients," among them enzyme inhibitors that interfere with protein digestion. The Chinese figured out about 2,000 years ago that antinutrients and phytic acid could be deactivated during fermentation, but in the processed-food laden land of the West, we've chosen cultural ignorance in favor of quick and cheap. Most of the soy we eat is unfermented.

Another issue with soy is its high amounts of isoflavones, which can be good and bad (hence the double-edged sword). Isoflavones are a powerful antioxidant, writes Robyn O'Brien in her book, that can help boost immunity. They also impact estrogen levels and have been shown to have positive effects on easing symptoms of menopause.

"But that plus can also be a minus," writes O'Brien, "because isoflavones' very ability to boost estrogen production can also pose hazards to our health. For example, the FDA scientists point out, during pregnancy, isoflavones could boost estrogen levels even higher, 'which could be a risk factor for abnormal brain and reproductive tract development.'" There is also a risk of breast and other reproductive cancers for women and the potential for testicular cancer and infertility in men.

While there was much news about the American Heart Association endorsing soy in 2000, there was little attention given when the AHA changed its mind and quietly withdrew its pro-soy claims in 2006, O'Brien points out. She also learned that they were not the only ones who expressed concerned about soy. A study in the British medical journal Lancet in 1996 warned of the effects of soy in infant formula. The study found babies had levels of isoflavones that were five to 10 times higher than women taking soy supplements for menopause.

The effects in girls could be early-onset puberty, obesity, breast and reproductive cancers. Boys could face testicular cancer, undescended testicles and infertility. Additionally, O'Brien says, a 2003 British study conducted by Gideon Lack of St. Mary's Hospital at Imperial College London followed 14,000 children from the womb through age 6 and found that kids who had been given soy formula as infants seemed almost three times as likely to develop a peanut allergy later on.

As if all this weren't disturbing enough, there's also another reason to be alarmed -- most of the soy we eat is genetically modified to withstand increasing doses of weed-killing herbicides, and really, we have no idea what the long-term affects of that might be. So, what's a person to do? Stay away from soy as much as possible, which also means avoiding processed foods. And, even if we choose not to eat those things, some of us may end up getting them anyway.

"There are different sales channels that these companies are using to sell soy with little regard for the cost to people down the road," said O'Brien. "Soy that is not used in grocery stores, in restaurants, or consumed by livestock, is disposed of in school lunch programs, hospitals, and prisons."

One organization, the Weston A. Price Foundation, is actually engaged in a lawsuit on behalf of Illinois state prisoners who say they're eating a diet made of largely soy protein. "In their letters, the prisoners have described deliberate indifference to a myriad of serious health problems caused by the large amounts of soy in the diet," the WAP Foundation writes. "

Complaints include chronic and painful constipation alternating with debilitating diarrhea, vomiting after eating, sharp pains in the digestive tract after consuming soy, passing out after soy-based meals, heart palpitations, rashes, acne, insomnia, panic attacks, depression and symptoms of hypothyroidism, such as low body temperature (feeling cold all the time), brain fog, fatigue, weight gain, frequent infections and an enlarged thyroid gland."

While the soy industry has profited from the widespread adoption of its products here in the United States, other developed countries have taken a more precautionary approach and not allowed soy to become as pervasive in their food supplies in an effort to protect the health of their citizens, says O'Brien. But it's not just people who are at risk. The deleterious effects of soy can start with the seed.

Goodbye Rainforests, Hello Roundup

Glenn Beck recently chastised Al Gore about his meat eating, telling him that if he really cared about the planet he should put down his burger and pick up some Tofurkey. But unfortunately, it's not that simple. Increasing evidence is showing that soy production is also catastrophic for the environment. Just like a beef burger, a soy-based veggie patty may also be leading to deforestation, water depletion, and pesticide pollution. But it's also important to note that the vast majority of soy produced globally isn't used for tofu and veggie sausage -- it's actually used to fatten livestock and create biofuels (so, yeah, you may still want to put down the burger).

"Soy is a really sexy crop; it's fantastic. It's nitrogen fixing, it's full of protein; it's very rich and flexible," Raj Patel said in an interview with New America Media. "The tragedy is that the way we grow it today has turned a blessing into a curse because the way that soy agriculture works is monocultural, which means it takes over large parts of land. In Brazil, that means the Cerrado and the rainforest in the Amazon, and they are draining the water that is beneath that land. There are even some soy and biofuel plantations in Brazil where the International Labor Organization says there are 40,000 slaves working today. Slaves! In Brazil, producing biofuels and soy."

Brazil is one of the leading soy producers in the world, second only to the U.S. and poised to quickly move to the top spot. And overall, the growth of the world market is huge, with global production doubling over the past 20 years and 210 million tons produced a year.

But it has also led to problems. Countries across Latin America, including Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia, are experiencing environmental problems similar to Brazil's. Rainforests are cleared, carbon emissions increase, indigenous and small farmers are displaced, aquifers are sucked dry, roads are built through sensitive ecosystems, and heavy pesticide use threatens waterways, soils and the health of locals. And as with all industrial monocultural farming, the rich (Monsanto, Cargill, and Bunge) get richer and the poor get poorer.

"The soy 'gold rush' has attracted fierce competition for land, leading to violence and murder," Marianne Betterly summarized in Mariri Magazine. "Hundreds of acres of rainforest are being cleared everyday, often by slave 'debt' laborers, to make room for more soy plantations."

So, we may get our cheap burgers and a deluge of soy-infused foods, but at great cost.

Adding to all these environmental problems with soy is the fact that much of the world's soy (and 85 percent of the U.S crop) is genetically engineered. Since the early '90s farmers in the United States (and now across the world) have been using Monsanto's Roundup Ready soy that is genetically engineered to be resistant to the herbicide Roundup, which is liberally sprayed on the crop to kill weeds.

Much of the promise of GE crops was that they'd lead to the use of less pesticides and herbicides, which threaten both human and environmental health. But that hasn't actually panned out. "Because herbicide-tolerant crops are designed to withstand application of weed killers, farmers can apply large amounts of pesticides without fear of harming their crops. The U.S. has seen more than a 15-fold increase in the use of glyphosate, or Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, on major crops from 1994 to 2005," Co-Op America reported.

And more damning evidence has just been released. A new study that just came out this week funded by a coalition of non-governmental organizations including the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Center for Food Safety, the Cornerstone Campaign, Californians for GE-Free Agriculture, Greenpeace International and Rural Advancement Fund International USA, found that GE corn, soybean and cotton crops have increased the use of weed-killing herbicides in the U.S. by 383 million pounds from 1996 to 2008.

The study will surely be accompanied by more alarms bells set off by small farmers, environmentalists and organic supporters. And it will be one more battle in the war against soy that's being fought on both health and environmental fronts. Perhaps it will make people think twice before eating soy products, processed food and even most meat.

Giant Monsters

SUBHEAD: A question arises with regard to the USA. Is it more a country or more a corporation? Image above: Detail for illustration in The Nation on corporatism vs capitalism. By Dmitry Orlov on 23 November 2009 in Club Orlov - (http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/11/giant-monsters.html) A few years ago I bought a sailboat from a fellow who I am sure wishes to remain unnamed, but who at the time made much of his boat restoration skills. He had made a number of alterations to the boat, some ambitious, some less so, while I was, at the time, quite inexperienced. In spite of my relative inexperience, I was already able to discern certain imperfections in the results of the seller's efforts. But I was very impressed with the boat itself (and the boat did turn out to be quite excellent) and so I chose to gloss over these slight imperfections in the seller's workmanship. For such a large man, the seller had a very soft and gentle tone of voice. He did disclose some things along the way that should have alarmed me. I believe that the reason they didn't was because his tone of voice had a calming, soothing effect on me. For instance, he could have said something like "I ran of caulk while installing this thing, so I mounted it on a slice of cheese from my lunchbox" and I probably would have thought "Mmm... cheese... lunch?" Also, the boat had recently returned from an extended ocean cruise, and the seller looked quite alive to me, leading me to think that none of these imperfections was life-threatening. And so I bought the boat. As I already mentioned, it turned out to be an excellent boat, but I turned out to be overly nonchalant about the non-life-threatening nature of the seller's workmanship. During our shakeout cruise most things that could break did break, causing me to question many of the seller's practices and techniques. Is it proper to cut pieces out of random structural elements with a reciprocating saw in order to make room for one's head? (Apparently the seller was one or two inches taller than the boat's designer had considered it to be humanly possible.) Is a piece of Masonite an acceptable substitute when the manufacturer specifies that a block of hardwood should be used to mount the autopilot? Is it sufficiently safety-conscious to seal a disconnected through-hull by plugging it with a rubber stopper from the inside? The good part in all this was that I, in the process of tackling these questions, along with a multitude of similar ones, one by one or in combination, sometimes in circumstances when I had my hands full just sailing the boat, gained immeasurably in knowledge and in confidence. Although confronting these questions one by one, sometimes in challenging circumstances, was an excellent (though sometimes unnerving) way to learn, eventually I realized that there was an important first question that I ought to ask of each thing on the boat: "Did the seller do it?" If he did it, then the next question would be, "What does it take it to rip out and replace it?" If it is neither very hard nor very expensive, then that is automatically the next step. If it is, then the third question becomes, "What's wrong with it?" If answering this question turns out to involve ripping it out and replacing it, then so be it, but leaving a stone unturned would not be conducive to either peace of mind or safety, because, although there are now very few of them left, I am yet to find A Thing He Did that does not have major issues. To be fair, the seller did do one very good thing: he kept afloat and sold to me a very good boat. Also, I can't fault him for trying to maintain a boat on a shoestring (I actually have immense respect for people who are able to do that well). Whatever he does, and however he does it, it clearly works for him. I see him leaping about the spindrift-covered deck in the midst of a howling tempest clutching a hammer and a screwdriver. Maybe he is happy, maybe he is sad, who knows... As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, consistency is "the hobgoblin of little minds." I agree, but I would go a step further and ardently wish that each and every little mind had such a hobgoblin to call its own. If someone's work is consistently excellent, that is better than sporadically excellent work. Although much excellent work can be undone by a single reputation-destroying, career-ending blunder, short of that, sporadic excellence is better than none at all. But if someone's work is more often than not of an abysmally ghastly quality and in general a monstrous travesty, then consistency can still be its one redeeming quality. If it is consistent, then one knows what to do with it, all of it, at once, and not waste any time trying to cherry-pick salvageable exceptions where none might exist. Allow me to present an example. Suppose you are wondering whether a particular public institution has any particular merit that would serve to justify its continued existence. It might be the health care system, or national defense, or the tax code, or any number of other similar boondoggles. We might consider each institution in and of itself, apart from all the others, to see whether it is consistently bad, or whether it has some redeeming qualities. Or we might save ourselves a lot of time by asking ourselves just one simple question: "Is it Bolshevik?" Because if it is Bolshevik, then that tells us right away that it is just one element of a perfectly monstrous entity called the USSR. This particular monstrous entity is already defunct, and so there is no need for us to go out and slay it, but were it not, we would know immediately that none of its institutions are in need of reform, because what would be the point? Making a perfect monster into an imperfect monster does not seem like a worthy goal. Allow me to present another example. Currently in the USA we now live surrounded by institutions that many of us readily concede are quite broken, but it still takes most of us considerable effort to declare any of them irredeemable. It is natural for us to look for redeeming qualities, to think that a certain negative outcome is the result of a mistake rather than the fullest possible expression of its true nature. It takes time and effort to collect enough evidence to be able to declare, based on a preponderance of evidence, that what we have here is something perfectly monstrous, and then to be ready to debate people who hold opposing viewpoints. Few of us are equipped to handle the task of outright condemnation. There are some experts whose job it is to condemn buildings, to decommission vessels, and to sentence people to death, and they sometimes have to exercise judgment, but mostly they just follow rules. And when there are no rules to follow, we are all helpless. This is where monsters come in handy: we all know what we must do to them. Like so many things that bedevil our lives, they have a notional rather than a physical reality, but in spite of that the effect they have on our lives can be quite real. Take corporations: the term "corporation" is actually a clever misnomer, because a corporation is, in fact, incorporeal — lacking a body. It has many of the same rights as a person, but in place of a body it has a "corporate veil" which, once pierced, usually reveals some cringing nincompoop who screwed up the paperwork and is now personally liable for his corporation's debts and transgressions. Since a corporation has personhood but lacks a body, it is, in a technically precise way, a phantom. Like other kinds of monsters, it is immortal, and very specific steps must be followed in order to kill it. Now, not all phantoms are monsters, but I hope you will agree that the potential is there. Just like us, monsters must follow certain rules. Vampires must drink human blood and stay out of the sun. Werewolves must turn into wolves and start mauling people at the sight of the full moon. Zombies must eat brains. Corporations must produce high share prices and dividends for their shareholders. This last one seems comparatively innocuous, but it is sufficiently abstract to make the transition between mere immortal phantomhood and complete monstrousness quite automatic, because usually there are both monstrous and non-monstrous ways to create value for shareholders, and the monstrous ways are often more profitable in the short run. Some corporations may not seem particularly monstrous at the moment, but given their monstrous propensities we can never let down our guard. Monsters require different treatment from most other things out there. We don't generally try to reform them. There is hardly a point in teaching a vampire good hygiene (rinse between meals, please!) or in muzzling a werewolf and clipping its claws, or in making zombies eat a balanced diet and observe Lent. Rather, we generally prefer to slay them. There are specific ways to kill various monsters. A vampire is dispatched by driving an aspen stake through its heart. Werewolves are shot with silver bullets. Zombies require a shotgun blast to the head. Corporations dissolve upon being doused with red ink, a bit like the Wicked Witch of the West. Now, a question arises with regard to the USA: is it more of a country (like, say, France) or is it more of a corporation (like, say AIG or GM or GS)? Looking at its politics, it is apparent that it is more of a country club than a country. Corporations are clearly the ones in charge, through electoral campaign donations, lobbyists, and the revolving door between corporate and government positions. The periodic electoral monkey-business and fake media frenzy are just there as an ad campaign to keep the brand fresh. It does seem more and more like a corporate entity, with a small and shrinking number of shareholders, whose latest scheme (now that the whole thing is spiraling the drain) is to have the government print lots of money just so that they can pocket huge sums of it. Just as a vampire must drink blood, the USA is compelled by its corporate nature to produce value for its shareholders, and the only way it can do so in a collapsing economy is by printing money. Monstrous, isn't it? So, how many more buckets of red ink will it take before we all get to hear "I'm dissolving! I'm dissolving!"? If you are not quite ready to hear that, then I recommend that you run home immediately, bar the door and get busy with the garlic and the crucifixes. Slaying monsters is not for everyone, you know.

Its the net energy, stupid!

SUBHEAD: The growing disparity between the richest 1% and everybody else is not just due to greed. It is also a result of the pie shrinking. Image above: Cartoon by Bilicki in 2008 modified by Juan Wilson From http://the-forgotten-man.blogspot.com/2009/11/politics-of-science-battleground.html By George Mobus on 22 November 2009 in Question Everything - (http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2009/11/its-the-net-energy-stupid.html)

Recall Bill Clinton's famous rejoinder to George Bush the Elder? "It's the economy, stupid". Well, it is the economy, but the economy is based on net energy flow for the production of all things important to human existence*.

A few blogs back I wrote about the computer model I've been developing with Charlie Hall, here at SUNY-ESF (State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry). In it, I mentioned the fact that net energy is the stuff that drives our economy, not the gross energy such as barrels of oil.

Except for heating oil, which isn't actually the stuff out of the ground, we refine oil to usable forms like diesel and gasoline. It is those products that we use and it still takes some energy to transport them to the points of use. So it is the net of the gross energy (e.g. barrels of oil, or tons of coal) minus the energy invested in extraction, refinement, and transportation that really counts as usable in the economy.

As I worked more on the paper that Hall and I will co-produce, I began realizing that this is much more significant than anybody seems to have realized. As I outlined in that prior blog, if gross energy is near or at peak (and some say it may be past a theoretical peak; that we are in a bumpy plateau due to the fluctuations in the financial markets) then this means that we are already passed peak net energy.

Moreover we long ago passed the point of inflection where net energy ceased to be rising exponentially fast and started to decelerate (the curve transitions from always going up faster in each time increment to going up more slowly in each time increment). It was that point of onset of deceleration that was the beginning of the end of the party, the energy consumption binge. That point appears to have been about 40 to 50 years ago in my model. Even accounting for some increases in energy efficiency due to improved technology, that probably translates into more than 30 years since the onset of the decline in net energy.

If this proves to be the case we are in very serious trouble (unless someone discovers some new magical source of energy like cold fusion). The problem is compounded by the fact that we haven't actually been paying attention to net energy available per unit time.

We count barrels of oil and tons of coal and cubic feet of natural gas, all measures of gross energy, and have obsessed on the peaks of production of these, since they are finite resources. It should be obvious to all that peaks of production of raw (gross) energy are extremely worrisome since over 80% of global energy use comes from fossil fuels.

As I have noted many times, the build-out and scale up of alternative energy capital equipment and supporting infrastructure, to replace fossil fuels in the time remaining before the law of diminishing returns catches up to us, is, for all practical purposes, infeasible (I note that I see more similar sentiments being expressed in the press these days as more scientists are coming to similar conclusions).

But focusing on gross energy fails to recognize and detect the impact of what is happening with net energy flow. That is what really impacts the economy. And if my model is even a little bit right on this, then my suppositions about reduced energy flow being the root cause of all the economic shifts we've been witness to for the last several decades is greatly strengthened.

Globalization, for example, was more about finding cheap labor to replace expensive energy for machines and expensive American labor that needed to be supported in energy-hungry lifestyles than finding new markets. The current housing bubble fiasco and Wall Street excesses, as well as so many corporate frauds being foisted on the American and world's working class are nothing more than attempts to hide the fact that it is increasingly hard to produce real assets because the net energy is diminishing!

The growing disparity between the richest 1% and everybody else is not just due to greed. It is also a result of the pie shrinking.

So-called "green jobs" can't be counted on to actually reverse this situation even if implemented in a new jobs stimulus program. No one is going to get rich or make a great living doing green work or producing green products unless they magically figure out how to beat the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Going green will, at best, partially stanch the blood loss. But with net energy going into decline (if we have already passed peak net energy) there is no physical way to make more wealth tomorrow than we made today. We cannot grow the asset base any more. Period.

The point of this research is that we had better, start to focus on measuring net energy flow to the economy as a function of time to see if we are approaching, at, or passed the peak of production. We need to know and we need to know now. The policies we adopt are critically dependent on knowing the situation.

But, you say, George, don't be naive. Our leaders don't do anything right now even knowing that peak oil is upon us. Why would you expect them to do the right things knowing peak net is passed? And of course this is the real fly in the ointment. Political will is weak. Political wisdom is absent without leave. Political hope trumps science even while the head politico of the country promises us science will lead policy (evidence against him is the continued hope that 'clean coal' will save the day).

Even so, I will pursue understanding. Who knows, maybe when the "shit hits the fan" for real (look for the next even deeper recession coming soon to an economy near you), then "the powers that be" will realize the errors in their ways and start listening to scientists in earnest.

Right. And monkeys will start to fly out of my butt (thanks to Mike Meyers for that disturbing vision).

Thanksgiving in Fallujah

SUBHEAD: Responding to such war crimes calls for constructive social and political action to end the empire. Image above: Six-year-old Fatma Rakwan, being held by her mother hospital in Iraq. Photo by Paul Kitagaki Jr from http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1112-01.htm By Albert Bates on 22 November 2009 in The Great Change - (http://peaksurfer.blogspot.com/2009/11/thanksgiving-in-fallujah.html)

When uranium comes out of the ground, it gets elementally separated from its ore at a mill somewhere near the mine. At the mill they crush and dissolve the rock in an acid, alkaline or peroxide solution. Since uranium is one of the heaviest elements, it settles quickly to the bottom of the tank. Workers remove the course residue, called yellowcake, even though it is typically black in color. Yellowcake is about 80% uranium, mostly in the form of triuranium octoxide (U3O8).

Mining and milling uranium leaves vast piles of radioactive tailings that are poorly regulated and have been known to cause extensive cancers and birth defects in communities close to the mines and mills. In Bulgaria excessive radium concentrations of up to 1077 Bq/kg were found in cereals grown on these areas. Similar agricultural diffusion occurred in France, but health studies were either not performed, or have been suppressed. We know from TVA’s experience at Edgemont, South Dakota, that the health of an entire town can be destroyed, and the latent hazard to inhalation and groundwater absorption only peaks after 800,000 years. Yellowcake travels to the enrichment plant where it undergoes isotope separation through processes of gaseous diffusion or laser centrifuge. The purpose is to separate the more common U-238 from the less common U-235. Low-enriched uranium is about four percent U-235, which is fine for civilian electric-power reactors. Highly-enriched uranium contains 90% or more U-235, and that is what is required for naval warships, submarines, and nuclear weapons. Because of the SALT and START treaties, there is a worldwide surplus of weapons-grade uranium, and not much is produced anymore. All the large uranium diffusion plants in the United States, the former Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom have been closed, and our largest, the K-25 plant in Tennessee, is now being demolished, with deregulation scheduled for late 2011. Reduced operations continue at Paducah, Kentucky and Portsmouth, Ohio. The amount of electricity required for isotope separation is huge, and when all three US plants were in operation, they consumed more power than the continent of Australia. This power capacity came from a combination of coal and hydro-power in the Tennessee and Ohio river valleys, and produced its own pollution that has only recently been taken into account in looking at the greenhouse effect of nuclear power. Producing nuclear fuel generates 21.7 grams of CO2 per kg, so for a reference reactor (1000 MWe @ 75% capacity), the CO2 released to the atmosphere would be 14 million metric tons per year. For the 104 reactors now active in the U.S., call it a billion tons. Safe and clean nuclear power. When U-238 is separated from yellowcake, it is tossed aside at the enrichment plants. The piles of depleted uranium has been called Q-metal, depletalloy, or D-38 over the years, but now most techies at the plants call it DU. Because about 2/3 of the U-235 has been removed, it is only 60% as radioactive when it leaves the plant as when it arrived, so it is treated as relatively safe. And, because of its high density — 19.1 g/cm3 — the military found it useful for armor plating and armor-piercing projectiles. Uranium rounds fired from A-10 Warthogs really made those civilian cars pop like popcorn on the Highway of Death from Kuwait City in Desert Storm in 1991. Six American vehicles struck with DU “friendly fire” in the desert were deemed to be too contaminated to take home, and were buried in Saudi Arabia. Of 16 more brought back to a purpose-built facility in South Carolina, six had to be buried in a low-level radioactive waste dump. So when Operation Iraqi Freedom rolled into town, DU rounds were outfitted into every tank and humvee. During the siege, Warthogs shot 300,000 DU rounds into the Iraqi planning ministry – about 75 tons of DU. Between 1,000 and 2,000 MT of DU were used in the three-week assault on Baghdad, including bombs dropped on a downtown restaurant in an unsuccessful attempt to kill Saddam Hussein. That was about 3 times more than were used in all of Gulf War-I, but the Pentagon was only getting started. Western journalists who spent a night on the outskirts of Baghdad on April 10, 2003, measured piles of jet-black dust at 9,839 and 11,585 counts per minute, more than 300 times average background radiation levels. A burnt tank round lying by the roadside pushed the Geiger meter off the scale. Similar DU tank rounds recovered in Saudi Arabia in 1991 were calibrated at 260 to 270 millirads per hour. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission limit is 100 mrad/yr for non-radiation workers and 1,700 mrad/yr for workers. Pentagon officials say that DU is relatively harmless and a necessary part of modern warfare. They say that pre-Gulf War studies that indicated a risk of cancer have been superseded by newer reports (which they commissioned). But a 2001 study of 15,000 Gulf War combat veterans and 15,000 control veterans found that the Gulf War veterans were 1.8 (fathers) to 2.8 (mothers) times more likely to have children with birth defects. After examination of children's medical records two years later, the birth defect rate increased by more than 20%. A laboratory study on rats produced by the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute showed that, after a study period of 6 months, rats treated with depleted uranium coming from implanted pellets, comparable to the average levels in the urine of Desert Storm veterans, substantial amounts of uranium were accumulating in their brains and central nervous systems, and showed a significant reduction of neuronal activity in the hippocampus in response to external stimuli. The conclusions of the study show that brain damage from chronic uranium intoxication is possible at lower doses than previously thought. Results from neurocognitive tests performed in 1997 showed an association between uranium in the urine and “problematic performance on automated tests assessing performance efficiency and accuracy.” At the Winter Soldier hearings on Capitol Hill last year, veterans of the Fallujah campaign in April 2004 described commanders requiring tanks to drive down streets and fire two DU rounds into every building. They described how the sunsets and sunrises over Fallujah were turned brilliant green from the uranium dust in the air. On October 12, 2009, the Iraqi Minister for Women’s Affairs and several local hospital administrators in Fallujah sent a letter to the President of the United Nations General Assembly. They respectfully reported that in September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 new born babies, 24% of whom were dead within the first seven days and 75% of the dead babies were classified as deformed. In August 2002, prior to the coalition assault on Fallujah, background morbidity was one birth defect to 530 live births. The doctors told the UN that an increasing number of babies are being born grotesquely deformed, with no heads, two heads, a single eye in their foreheads, scaly bodies or missing limbs. In addition, young children in Fallujah are now experiencing cancers and leukemias at abnormal rates. It is not known how many birth defects are not reaching the hospital. One grave digger of a single cemetery is burying four to five babies a day, most of which he says are deformed. We know from studies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, atomic veterans, uranium miners and nuclear workers that birth defects and leukemia are just the early warning signs for what is still to come. Leukemias show up in the first 5 to 15 years, because damage to blood-forming organs in the bones is the most rapidly propagated. After 20 to 30 years we will see cancers of the bone, breast, lung, colon and other soft tissues. The genetic damage will continue for 2000 years, because only about 1 percent is expressed in each generation. Five years ago, as USAnians prepared for Thanksgiving, an estimated 100,000 residents of Fallujah, where pre-battle population was 340,000, were cut off from escape by U.S. forces. Trapped in their homes, they struggled to survive incessant bombardment without fresh food, water or electricity. Emergency humanitarian aid was kept out for more than 2 weeks. The hospital in the central Nazzal district was reduced to rubble. More than 6000 dead civilians lay in the streets, some bodies partly melted by white phosphorus. Lt. Col. Brandl, commander of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, was filmed giving a “pep talk” to his marines: “The enemy has got a face – he's called Satan,” Brandl said. “He's in Fallujah, and we're going to destroy him.” Article 6(b) of the 1945 Nuremberg Charter defined as a war crime the “wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages.” Human experimentation was also defined as a war crime under Nuremberg. Nuclear power is surely the largest medical experiment on unconsenting humans in history.