Ray, I do see a need for a government/private cooperative approach to finding a
solution to the global-warming gas problem and to a number of other
environmental problems that we are going have to deal with in future. However,
I really wonder how easily a cooperative approach that can actually do
something positive can happen, or happen in time. Currently, here in Canada,
the level of cooperation between government and components of the private
sector that are causing problems is at a high level, but it's not going in the
right direction. At the federal level, our government has generally proven
unsupportive of international commitments on limiting greenhouse gas emissions,
and here at home it appears to want to get rid of anything or anyone that gets
in the way of natural resource industries that produce greenhouse gases or
other harmful environmental effects. At the provincial level, our western
provinces are currently riding high on tar sands oil and prairie potash. So, I
guess what I'm saying is that while there's plenty of cooperation, it's way
over on the side that makes things worse, not better.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Ray Harrell
To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION'
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 12:34 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Monsters that lurk in the ground
Ed,
Do you think there is a need for cooperation between governments to deal with
these issues? Also, there are the huge frozen methane deposits in the ocean
that are thawing as the oceans are warming. It's particularly bad in the
shallow parts of the ocean like the Gulf of Mexico. The science says that it
is likely that the thawing Methane is giving us the phenomenon of the sinking
ships and falling airplanes in the Bermuda Triangle.
The problem of methane transportation across distances seems beyond the
private sector's capabilities. But a government/private cooperation could
probably produce a solution rather quickly except for the short term necessity
of the private sector to create scarcity for the purpose of profit. There is
a LOT of Methane in the planet.
Instead of government/private cooperation, the private sector is like the
monkey whose hand is trapped in the jar holding on to the banana. The
private sector wants to kill off the government (Grover Norquist) in a kind of
Oedipal relationship that makes no sense other than as a groupthink
psycho-pathology. If corporations are, as the Supreme Court says,
individuals, then what kind of Individuals are they? What age category of
individual does their actions represent? Ten or Eleven years old or are they
simply psychopathological with no morality about self interest?
Today we are about to elect a businessman who is a Bishop from a secretive
religion whose beliefs we have no idea about and who says that states and
government employees can expect no cooperation or help from him. His
willingness to turn his morals on a dime certainly fits the person who will do
whatever he thinks he can get away with for his own purposes. His only
record is one of alienation and personal profit which he calls "business" and
all of that secrecy. There are no observable core moral values because his
church hides their foundational premises and rituals behind a code of secrecy
except for the "elect."
There seems to be no logical negotiation around these issues, like the
methane deposits, that could simply kill the human population off. Instead
they would rather frack for gas and destroy the water table because they can
stimulate both gas and water business as a result. This system is not
unlike the window guy that goes down the street breaking store windows and
leaving his card to fix them or a Doctor who stimulates business by making his
patients addicted to drugs they don't need because of kickbacks from a drug
company. (Anyone checked Lipitor lately and what's happening to the
generics?)
I don't see how anyone who knows anything about this could be for the
insurance companies as healthcare providers. None of this makes sense. The
only option is governmental action for the good of both the patient and the
doctors because that's the purpose of a Democratic government. The good and
value of every citizen and not just the one's who chose a rich parent in the
heavenly lottery. The private sector has a built in incentive to keep you
sick because you don't pay unless you're sick. That's no healthcare plan.
It's also a lousy upkeep plan for automobilies. My Honda years ago had a
monthly upkeep and service plan that was far cheaper than the "drive it until
it stops" plan of the American companies. But the Japanese have an old
culture that plans ahead even though the West insisted upon claiming their lack
of innovation. The same charge now aimed at the Chinese.
What makes anyone believe that an International corporate private sector
would be good for the general population of the planet when that sector's sole
purpose is wealth creation for their own small groups at any cost including a
morality built on zero-sum i.e. Winner/Loser morality. How is that not a
psychopathology?
Family Feudalism in the 19th century seems more responsible than these folks.
That's why the New World version of Feudalism was different and was called
"Robber" Aristocracy with nothing more than "barbarian culture" as their
motives. That is also why it took the Marshall Plan to convince Europe that
America was a better role model than communism. We bought them off.
Americans had been so bad with poverty and the casino mentality, that war torn
Europe was about to go Communist. So America stood up and behaved and paid
Europe to rebuild. Frankly without Communism as a competitor they are now bad
again. Anyone ridden an American airliner lately compared to the
cleanliness of the Cold War? How about American hospitals? How does
capitalism deal with its business with "Communist China?" Well they rename
it and downplay communism and give it all kinds of cultural claptrap to explain
why they won't succeed until they are at the gate and then we will all be Rome.
But there is a bigger question than these local National issues. How can
the moral people in economics today justify what is going on as good for the
whole system if the planet ignites as methane is released in great Farts?
(And they complain about Indians being immoral for having our casinos.)
REH
Ed Weick published:
As the Earth warms, forest floors add greenhouse gases to the air
By Brian Vastag, Published: June 11
Huge amounts of carbon trapped in the soils of U.S. forests will be released
into the air as the planet heats up, contributing to a "vicious cycle" that
could accelerate climate change, a new study concluded.
"As the Earth warms, there will be more carbon released from soils, and that
will make the Earth warm even faster," said Eric Davidson, who studies soil
carbon at the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts but was not involved
in the new study.
Forests are an important buffer against climate change, absorbing some of the
carbon-dioxide pollution released from burning fossil fuels. Fallen leaves and
dead trees return carbon to the soil, which takes its brown color from the
element.
But scientists have disagreed about how much of this huge store of locked-in
carbon is at risk for release into the atmosphere.
"Young carbon" - such as that stored in leaves -rapidly returns to the air as
microbes decompose plant matter. As the air warms, the decomposition speeds up,
releasing more carbon. That process is well-known.
But deeper in the soil, older carbon is locked away as "humus" - the soft,
brown material that makes forest floors spongy. Some scientists have asserted
that this carbon will stay locked away even as the planet warms.
To test this idea, scientists took advantage of experimental forests
maintained by the U.S. Energy Department and U.S. Forest Service in Wisconsin
and North Carolina.
Since the late 1990s, scientists have blown carbon dioxide from large tanks
into these forests; the gas carries a specific radioactive carbon signature,
which can be easily traced.
Francesca Hopkins of the University of California-Irvine collected soil from
the two forests in jars and then measured how much carbon dioxide the soil
emitted as she warmed the containers. She also measured how much of the carbon
dioxide was more than a decade old- meaning it had been locked away in humus
for years.
She found that about one-third of the released carbon dioxide came from soils
at least a decade old. As the soil heated up, that ratio stayed about the same,
meaning that the older carbon was just as vulnerable to rising temperatures as
the younger carbon.
"We now know for the top 15 centimeters [about six inches] of topsoil, most
of that is going to be vulnerable to warming," Hopkins said. "It's going to
increase its respiration rate as global temperatures warm."
Hopkins called this accelerated release of carbon dioxide a contributor to a
"vicious cycle" in which soil carbon dioxide triggers additional atmospheric
warming, which in turn pushes the soil to release even more carbon dioxide.
"While that older material is not going to decompose really fast, there's an
awful lot of it," said Susan Trumbore, the scientist who led the study.
The study increases concerns that temperate forests will flip from net
absorbers of carbon dioxide to net emitters of the air-warming gas sooner
rather than later, said Trumbore of the University of California-Irvine and the
Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Germany.
The average surface temperature of the Earth has increased by 1.3 degrees
Fahrenheit since 1900. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
called for limiting global warming to 3.6 degrees, a goal that looks
increasingly difficult to reach as forests, melting permafrost in Arctic
regions and the warming oceans absorb less and less of the greenhouse gas.
Hopkins said her results should focus attention on reducing carbon-dioxide
pollution from burning fossil fuels. "We can control how much gasoline we burn
and how much coal we burn, but we don't have control over how much carbon the
soil will release once this gets going," she said.
The study was published online Monday by the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences.
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